Notes from Microsoft's (MSFT) 2016 Build Conference - Nomura

Nomura analyst, Frederick Grieb, attended Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) annual developer conference, Build 2016, in San Francisco and offerd updates on several new technologies. No change to investment implications including Buy rating and $65 PT.

The analyst had a chance to try out Microsoft’s HoloLens, mixed reality, holographic glasses. The HoloLense Development Edition began shipping to developers on March 30, 2016 at a list price of $3,000. We were impressed with the system’s ability to mix holograms with real life objects (the ability to take a picture from a website and virtually hang it on a wall in a room to see how it would look, before purchasing, for example). This is an interesting piece of technology which may have many future applications, but for now, there is no benefit from HoloLense in the model.

Microsoft acquired Xamarin, a company which provides tools for .NET developers to write Windows, iOS and Android apps that share code across multiple platforms. Microsoft acquired Xamarin in February, 2016 and announced at Build that the Xamarin SDK would be bundled for free with Microsoft’s Visual Studio Development Environment. It is likely that Microsoft has made this move to bring more developers to its platform. We believe this may be a successful strategy, but it also appears to highlight Microsoft’s diminished focus on Windows Phone.

Microsoft helps developers turn retail Xbox One into a dev kit. Microsoft announced that it was allowing users to install “dev mode” on any retail Xbox One, allowing developers to register their retail console as a development kit. This should allow indie developers to more easily create games for Xbox, providing greater access to Microsoft’s ecosystem.

For an analyst ratings summary and ratings history on Microsoft click here. For more ratings news on Microsoft click here.

Shares of Microsoft closed at $55.57 yesterday.

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