These numbers would've bothered me ten years ago, but they don't any more.<p>Because no matter how many units Microsoft continues to sell, they no longer set the agenda, and that's the important shift. 10 years ago, the entire industry had to dance around MS on tiptoe. That's over.<p>There is no longer a single app platform that one company controls that dominates the industry. Microsoft is continuing to milk their golden cow by copying all the best features from everyone else's products and using their sales muscle to push their products in large volumes, good for them.<p>But they no longer dictate the technical specifications and business models of the platforms I write for, and as long as that's true they can sell a billion smart phones for all I care.
I don't believe the Linux vs windows server market share numbers.<p>My current company has about 40 linux servers and 3 windows. My previous company had 1 windows server to 5 linux. The one before that was a similar ratio.<p>I'm looking around online to see how IDC collected/calculated this data but
can't see anything that actually says. The only thing I can think of is if
they are taking commercial unixes like redhat and suse and comparing them
against windows. If that is the case these numbers are beyond worthless due to
the fact that most linuxs end up being centos, debian, ubuntu or other free
distros.
MSFT never gets enough credit for what they've done with the Xbox. They've got the #1 machine (by games sold, the metric that counts) in their second at-bat in an industry that has historically dashed consumer electronics companies to bits. They somehow charge 23 million users for the same thing Nintendo and Sony give away for free. They've been at the forefront as far as connectivity and media consumption since the original Xbox. Despite the fact that everyone I know is already on their third or fourth unit due to Red Rings of Death, they all love it.
The techcrunch article is full of pointless commentary, I recommend just reading the original article: <a href="http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/06/25/microsoft-by-the-numbers.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/06/25...</a>
The problem with Techcrunch's implicit interpretation of the Microsoft stats is that they mostly are trailing indicators of a business model. Let's take Office as an example. Does anyone seriously think that it will still enjoy network effects five years from now? It was an exciting (at least financially) business model 15 years ago when Microsoft could basically tax the electronic exchange of business information. Now, Office documents can be at least read, if not written, without paying the tax. Word is hurt by the cultural shift away from using it as a means of generating pretty pieces of paper. Better collaboration tools are slowly eroding the Excel as database-synchronized-by-email model that dominates its use (as a percentage of documents). A large user base is nice, but it doesn't justify a high P/E ratio unless it can be leveraged in the future.<p>Look at the "smartphone" numbers. The implicit message was that Apple doesn't really have all that much marketshare. Whatever. But, what's Microsoft have? Close to nothing, and there's little evidence that it's going to catch up. No one in his right mind can claim that the "phone" won't replace many (more) current desktop/laptop use cases in the coming years. What slice of that goes to Microsoft?<p>I don't know much about the CRM space, so I can't comment on the Salesforce.com vs. MSFT thing. But, what's notable is that Microsoft doesn't really enjoy network effects in that space. It must compete like other enterprise software companies -- again, not a model to justify a high P/E. The netbook numbers can be counted as a "save" against consumer-facing Linux distros, but I understand Microsoft to be practically giving away Windows 7 "starter" edition to keep share. Hardly a great model. Furthermore, the OS is little more than a platform for a web browser. Microsoft is doing all the dirty work and making little in return.<p>What if IBM blogged about its huge mainframe market share in the Fortune 500? Should we be excited about the future prospects of z/OS? How many mainframe customers would gladly get rid of their mainframes if switching costs were lower? 80+%? Look at the number of skilled COBOL programmers out there. Surely such a large development community will continue to propel the platform forward?<p>What's causing Microsoft's stock to stagnate is that the company has failed to maintain the network effects that fueled its growth and pricing power. They're becoming yet another company competing for consumer nickels and corporate dollars. While that's well and good, it's not the stuff of hocky stick growth curves.<p>And, Bing? I started using it because of 15% Bing Cash Back deals. Forget doing an actual search or clicking an ad.
For the "Global Windows Live Mail users", it would be nicer if they used active users (signed in during the past 90 days) to compare. I know I have a few Windows Live email accounts sitting around that I haven't touched in forever.
I believe his stats - but WHO are all these people using Windows Live Mail/Messenger, Azure, Windows 7, Windows server, etc? I have yet to meet one. Are these middle America and international markets?
See <i>Seven Copies of Windows 7 Per Second: Fast! But How Fast?</i> <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1466549" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1466549</a> for a fun way to put the numbers in perspective.<p>(links to <a href="http://technologizer.com/2010/06/27/seven-copies-of-windows-7-per-second-fast-but-how-fast/" rel="nofollow">http://technologizer.com/2010/06/27/seven-copies-of-windows-...</a>)
Microsoft is a great company, I don't know why a lot of people dislike them. Look at their track record, look at the numbers they're impressive. Perhaps it's jealousy, who knows? Sure they have done several mistakes along the way ahem ie6... But you know what, at the end what matter is the profits. I don't know why people bash on them for their closed source technologies. They're here to make money, if they wanted to give away everything they would have been a charity not a business! You might as well go bash on coke, their ingredients are "closed source." In order for a taco truck to make money they got to sell their tacos, can't give them away now can they? In a nutshell all you who hate Microsoft, find a better reason to hate them. You can't say ie9, because it's beginning to look like it'll be an awesome browser for users and developers alike. End rant. Sorry if this is a little off topic. :)
I just finished reading the MSFT blog post that this TechCrunch piece got its info from. I then went to nytimes.com and an ad on the site was "While you were reading this, 21 people bought Windows 7...Click here to learn more" and it takes you right to the MSFT blog with these numbers. I don't think this site and these numbers are a professional way to run a marketing campaign. Especially when your campaign lists net income on it and compares it with two of your growing, trendy competitors. It just feels...tacky. And that is coming from a user who switched to Windows 7 after using OSX for 4 years.
I'm not sure what everyone else's experience is, but the MSN Messenger # feels a bit inflated. I'm in Australia so MSN was <i>the</i> dominant chat platform in the early 2000's. But these days if I want someone to chat to -- they're going to be on FBchat and not MSN. (Which also puts MSFT in second place there behind facebook)
I just bought a netbook with Windows 7 starter, and I did not wipe the Windows partition.<p>That said, the only reason I'm trotting out that installation is to test my sites on IE. Otherwise, It's Ubuntu all the way. Probably Android when Intel releases the Froyo build. Also maybe Chrome, just for fun.<p>In other words, the only reason I'm keeping Windows is I like playing with barely functional software. (I kid, I kid. Though it did hang for 4 hours on the logout screen.)