Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on May 12, 2004 04:42 AM
With continuing billion dollar quarterly losses, a cancelled UltraSparc chip for 2006, and analyst estimates that the newest chip won't be out before 2008, how long can Sun continue to sustain $4 billion dollar losses per year?
Considering GNU/Linux growth rates on servers at 50%+ annually, Sun's losses are only going to increase. Several analysts have concluded that it's going to get a lot worse for Sun until 2008 when their new chip comes out, and I'd agree with that assessment. IBM, Intel and AMD are all going to have cpus that are going to be far faster than anything Sun has up until 2008 when they close the gap, if they are still around. It appears that Sun thinks they can keep customers on Solaris waiting until 2008 to upgrade to their new cpu offering when that comes out. I don't think so.
So with $4 billion dollar annual losses now, and losses rising each year until at least 2008, can Sun stay in business if they lose 3 additional billion this year, $4-5 billion in 2005, $5-6 billion in 2006 and $6-7 billion in 2007?
Does Sun have $18 billion to 21 billion to lose? I'd consider those numbers on the conservative side. I don't see them reversing these losses with job cuts, as they've been adjusting headcount since last year, and they're still losing the same amount of money. And everyone else is increasing sales and profits, and Sun is still losing the same amount of money. Even a weak dollar and a strengthening economy and increased tech spending isn't helping them.
I don't remember the figures, but in the past I've seen cash on hand comments from supporters when the quarterly losses were written about, but the supporters always fail to mention the debt that Sun also has.
How much cash does Sun have, and how much debt do they have?
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How much cash on hand for Sun?
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on May 12, 2004 04:42 AMConsidering GNU/Linux growth rates on servers at 50%+ annually, Sun's losses are only going to increase. Several analysts have concluded that it's going to get a lot worse for Sun until 2008 when their new chip comes out, and I'd agree with that assessment. IBM, Intel and AMD are all going to have cpus that are going to be far faster than anything Sun has up until 2008 when they close the gap, if they are still around. It appears that Sun thinks they can keep customers on Solaris waiting until 2008 to upgrade to their new cpu offering when that comes out. I don't think so.
So with $4 billion dollar annual losses now, and losses rising each year until at least 2008, can Sun stay in business if they lose 3 additional billion this year, $4-5 billion in 2005, $5-6 billion in 2006 and $6-7 billion in 2007?
Does Sun have $18 billion to 21 billion to lose? I'd consider those numbers on the conservative side. I don't see them reversing these losses with job cuts, as they've been adjusting headcount since last year, and they're still losing the same amount of money. And everyone else is increasing sales and profits, and Sun is still losing the same amount of money. Even a weak dollar and a strengthening economy and increased tech spending isn't helping them.
I don't remember the figures, but in the past I've seen cash on hand comments from supporters when the quarterly losses were written about, but the supporters always fail to mention the debt that Sun also has.
How much cash does Sun have, and how much debt do they have?
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