Originally Posted by punkworld

They can lose money a lot faster than that, under the right conditions. A failed product line combined with new, strong competition, for example, could do billions upon billions of damage. And new competition is a distinct possibility. For example, Google is planning to hire people to aid the free and open source OpenOffice, which could be killer competition for MS Office. Worse, if MS Vista fails to meet expectations, Google may be tempted to start thinking about its own operating system.

Aside from that, the XBox and MS Media Center Edition and its successors may well lose the fight for dominance as the all-in-one home entertainment center. That would be a huge blow to them, and could even destroy their future markets. And it isn't an unlikely thought, either, if you look at how MS has failed with almost everything other than its OS and Office.

The real reason I think MS will last for quite a while is that their margins right now are still insanely huge, giving them an almost infinite war chest to conquer new markets, while at the same time they are acquiring new patents by the thousands, giving them such a capital of intellectual property that exploiting that could turn out to be a solid business in itself.