More losses for Sun - sweet
WinNetMag | at | by Mike
Sun Microsystems has watched its earnings tumble year over year for 10 consecutive quarters, and the company's financial picture is getting uglier these days. This week, Sun posted a $286 million loss on revenues of $2.54 billion, down 8 percent from the same quarter a year ago. The company also warned investors that its loss for the upcoming quarter will be far worse than previously expected. The news sent Sun's stock price tumbling to as low as $3.58. No matter how you feel about Sun, the company is in trouble. It sells an aging, expensive, proprietary version of UNIX that runs on aging, expensive, proprietary server hardware in an era when inexpensive Linux and Windows servers that run on commodity PC-based hardware offer similar or superior performance for far less money. The company has refused to change course or lay off workers, causing a Merrill Lynch analyst to publish a rare public letter to the company in which he blasted its management for not seeing the light.