twitter's Journal: M$ Has Less Cash than Apple, hits $500E6 Cost Cutting Skids.

Microsoft has hit the skids. Software sales tumbled and they ended last quarter with less cash on hand than Apple and has announced a $500 million dollar savings plan.

Microsoft closed the quarter with less cash than Apple. Cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments for Microsoft add up to $20.7 billion. Apple, meanwhile, closed the quarter with $24.5 billion. ... Steve Jobs ... [said], "The economic downturn may present extraordinary opportunities to companies that have cash. Cash is king. We are very comfortable with cash in bank and it is not burning a hole in our pocket."

Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said Microsoft ... would cull as much as $500 million from its budget, by cutting marketing and travel expenditures, as well as reducing growth in the ranks of its employees. The company will also save in part by cutting spending on facilities and data centers.

"I don't see any scenario where we'll grow by that much this year," Liddell said. "What we've done is essentially gone right across the company -- every division -- and looked for areas where we would like to spend less."

What, they don't want to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software? No, the hiring freeze rumors were true.

Update: Apple Insider highlights just how embarrassing the quarter was for M$ :

While Microsoft executives like to talk about Apple as an insignificant company with less than 5% of the worldwide market share of all PCs and servers sold, the Mac maker now has more cash than Microsoft and earns more than half of its profits and over three fourths its revenues.

Boycott Novell has lots of details on M$'s current crisis, including serious allegations of fraud from an insider. referenced and summarized here.