Given the current state of the economy can you blame them for having a more business orientated focus. MS have been concentrating on core products, probably with a view to stabilisation rather than innovation.
The buy-in of Skype isn't so different to what other innovative IT companies have done recently, and is probably a good acquisition for their push towards mobile tech across mobile and desktop platforms (i.e. windows 8). Don't forget, MS has a history of absorbing innovation, that's how SQL Server started. I also suspect the vast customer base also had an impact on the acquisition, and they probably have a lot of patents stashed away somewhere.
Even better for us data professionals is the fact that SQL Server revenue was up 16%, which shows the product is popular, solid, and selling well
I wonder how much of that increase is because of the changes to licensing in 2012 and the corresponding edition restructure. It would be nice to see some figures behind this in a future post. Perhaps there was a spending spree to beat the deadline for the price increase and the license changes?