If there’s one product that Microsoft is probably known for, apart from the Windows operating system, would be its gaming console, the Xbox. Without doubt that is probably one of Microsoft’s more popular consumer products to date but interestingly enough, Microsoft’s co-founder, Paul Allen, seems to think that perhaps Microsoft should spin off the Xbox franchise along with their Bing search engine, and instead focus more on the B2B (business to business) side of things. This advice comes from Vulcan Capital chief investment analyst, Paul Ghaffari, whose team helps to manage Paul Allen’s considerable stock in Microsoft.
According to Ghaffari, “The search business and even Xbox, which has been a very successful product, are detracting from [the success of the enterprise unit] […] We would want them to focus on their best competencies. My view is there are some parts of that operation they should probably spin out, get rid of, to focus on the enterprise and focus on the cloud.” Granted Bing isn’t exactly the most popular search engine at the moment, at least compared to Google, but the Xbox is definitely holding its own, especially against the likes of Sony’s PlayStation and Nintendo’s Wii efforts. What do you guys think?
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