We know Microsoft’s stock price has dipped in recent months to its lowest level in years. We also know that they have begun to lay off several thousand employees to cut costs, citing declining PC sales as the reason.

Certainly a company has the right to shed workers as it sees fit, particularly when there’s no union contract to be concerned about. However, that’s not the main issue at stake here. It’s whether Microsoft really understands why business is down and what they need to do in order to set things right.

To my way of thinking it’s highly doubtful, although they will certainly earn high profits from their sales for years to come. You can see some of the problems when you examine the prerelease versions of their future products, as many journalists and individual users have already done.

Let’s start with Internet Explorer 8, their latest update to what is still the world’s most used browser, although its market share dominance is far below what it used to be.

Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.

This article was posted on Sunday, March 15th, 2009 at 6:00 PM and is filed under News and tagged with: browser, Dominance, Future Products, Internet Explorer 8, Journalists, Market Share, Microsoft, PC sales, Prerelease Versions, Profits, Stock Price.