

Microsoft by the Numbers - fname
http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/26/microsoft-numbers/

======
erikpukinskis
These numbers would've bothered me ten years ago, but they don't any more.

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.

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.

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.

------
Dobbs
I don't believe the Linux vs windows server market share numbers.

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.

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.

~~~
donw
I was thinking the same thing; Apache has double the marketshare on the web,
and all the computationally intensive plays that I know of use Linux or BSD
clusters on the backend. Google alone has somewhere over a million boxes,
Amazon isn't exactly tiny, neither is Facebook, and most of the banks that I
know of are still Big Iron on the backend.

~~~
10ren
I think Windows Server has a large market share in medium size businesses.
Note: they didn't specify "web" server. They didn't specify much. Who knows,
maybe they count google as one server? Also, I sometimes think the experiences
of us here may be out of touch with what most ordinary businesses do.

 _EDIT_ funfacts: Here's their source for "linux servers, 21.2%"
[http://blogs.computerworld.com/15675/idc_windows_dominates_l...](http://blogs.computerworld.com/15675/idc_windows_dominates_linux_in_servers_not_just_the_desktop)
which quotes: [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/behind-the-idc-data-
wind...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/behind-the-idc-data-windows-
still-no-1-in-server-operating-systems/5408) which in turn quotes:
[http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/server-sales-show-signs-of-
lif...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/server-sales-show-signs-of-life-in-the-
fourth-quarter-ibm-remains-top-dog/31236) which quotes this IDC press release:
[http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?sessionId=&containerId=prU...](http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?sessionId=&containerId=prUS22224510&sessionId=IL5URBYDC2OK4CQJAFDCFFAKBEAVAIWD)
and here's IDC's description of their information product:
<http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=IDC_P348>

I couldn't see linux units mentioned there, nor their methodology, or
definition of "server".

 _EDIT2_ The bottom of the press release: _includes quarterly shipments (both
ISS and upgrades) and revenues (both customer and factory), segmented by
vendor, family, model, region, operating system, price band, CPU type, and
architecture._ Doesn't really help, but there's also a phone number and email
address.

~~~
illumin8
These numbers almost assuredly are based on "units shipped" which means you
only count a Linux sale if someone orders a server from Dell or HP and
requests a RH or Suse Linux license with it, rather than a Windows Server 2008
license or the default.

Because, as others have mentioned, the vast majority of large webhosts or
Linux users "roll their own free distro" or purchase an enterprise agreement
from RH or Suse, they will never be counted.

Microsoft always plays games with the numbers. They are playing a similar game
with Windows 7 numbers - You can buy a Windows 7 upgrade for $99, which only
gives you a single license, or you can buy a "family upgrade pack" for $99,
which gives you 3 upgrade licenses.

Guess which one allows them to count 3x the number of licenses sold? Right,
and they made it so that the family pack can even upgrade pirated versions of
XP (I know this because I used this to bring one of my home copies up to legit
status). It's a genius marketing move because for basically $33 per computer
they get all the pirate computers to become fully legit, counted installs of
Windows.

Never mind all the double-counting and triple-counting of licenses - MS has
always been king at this. They force Dell/HP to bundle a license of Windows 7
with every computer sold knowing that corporations have Volume License Keys
and wipe and reinstall Windows with their corp version. 2 copies of Windows
sold for every physical computer.

What I would really like to see are the numbers of Windows computers receiving
updates. That would be a legitimate number.

~~~
tl
>What I would really like to see are the numbers of Windows computers
receiving updates. That would be a legitimate number.

Actually, that number wouldn't be valid either. How many corporations block
Windows Update because new versions of IE break some intranet we app?

~~~
illumin8
Good point - simply take # of PCs receiving updates + number of Volume
licenses sold. That = total number of operating copies of Windows.

------
mattmaroon
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.

~~~
abraham
According to VGChartz the Wii has 490,542,492 total titles sold vs the 360
with 359,051,266.

<http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly.php>

~~~
potatolicious
I believe he's talking about "attach rate" - the magical metric that drives
the console hardware industry (i.e., games purchased per console).

~~~
AlisdairO
That's not such a magic number in this case. In most cases, console
manufacturers make a loss on the console, and profit on the titles. Nintendo
makes money on the console too, so it's not such an important figure.

~~~
kabdib
Nintendo makes money on their hardware; the DS and the Wii were never sold
under cost.

Sony _definitely_ loses money on every console.

Don't know about MS.

~~~
rbanffy
IIRC, the PS3 slim is profitable. The PS2 has also been profitable and has
been a consistently good seller (with some decrease in late 2009 and early
2010 (but that's expected - the PS2 is old). Console death rate is also a
problem: even if it's not replaced under warranty, it's still a loss for the
360.

------
smilliken
The techcrunch article is full of pointless commentary, I recommend just
reading the original article:
[http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/06/25...](http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/06/25/microsoft-
by-the-numbers.aspx)

~~~
rbanffy
But the original article is a selective disclosure of numbers carefully
massaged for showing Microsoft as a solid company with a bright future. TC's
commentary is to point this fact out.

------
ShabbyDoo
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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

And, Bing? I started using it because of 15% Bing Cash Back deals. Forget
doing an actual search or clicking an ad.

~~~
Encosia
"Let's take Office as an example. Does anyone seriously think that it will
still enjoy network effects five years from now?"

Absolutely.

Office isn't going anywhere in most business settings. If anything, the last
two Office and SharePoint releases have only continued strengthening its
position.

I definitely wouldn't bet that the desktop/Windows/Office thick client
paradigm will last forever, but I also wouldn't dare bet against it in the
near-term.

~~~
rbanffy
Oh boy... My wife led the project of her company's local branch intranet. She
wanted to do it in Plone (probably my fault, as I introduced her to it), but
central office demanded it to be done in Sharepoint because that's what they
use.

I feel sorry for the companies who use Sharepoint for its document
sharing/management... In time, it will prove a huge competitive advantage for
their competition.

~~~
zkmaster
SharePoint is a great intranet and collaboration product, but it's not a
document management system. However, you can extend SharePoint with Laserfiche
document management. Check it out on our site www.aisww.com or read more on
our document management blog: blog.aisww.com

~~~
rbanffy
Was this spam? My whole point is that Sharepoint is _not_ a great intranet and
collaboration product. It's unnecessarily tied to Microsoft Office products
(and it's that way by design), has simply appalling content management (why
would I want to buy a second product from a second vendor to make what I
bought bearable to use?). The point was that the Sharepoint intranet had half
the functionality for twice the budget and twice the maintenance cost of the
originally designed Plone-based solution.

~~~
zkmaster
Hi, No, its not spam. I don't know enough about the installation to be able to
speak intelligently on the specifics of that project, but we have many clients
that use SharePoint for intranets and collaboration while its not perfect for
every situation that does not mean its not a good intranet/collaboration
product.

My point about extending SharePoint was that you said "I feel sorry for the
companies who use Sharepoint for its document sharing/management" and I was
addressing that by mentioning a product we use to fill that gap in SharePoint.

There are many reasons for using SharePoint, there's no need for me to get
into that here. If you need to add document management to SharePoint,
Laserfiche is a nice easy way to do that.

------
michaelfairley
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.

~~~
scorpion032
Wouldn't that defeat the original purpose of posting it? ;)

------
barmstrong
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?

~~~
trezor
_but WHO are all these people using Windows Live Mail/Messenger, Azure,
Windows 7, Windows server, etc?_

Guilty one here. While I use Windows 7, Windows server (multiple licenses) etc
at home, I guess just Windows 7 is the norm for most people I know.

At work I can attest to having some hundred Windows Servers and not a single
Linux box. As we were a consulting firm, we had lots of different customers
but our focus-area was MS-tech. Ofcourse my numbers will be biased, but let me
tell you: there are lots of Windows Servers out there. Lots. Sure some Linux-
servers here and there as well, but Windows Servers are having pretty good
days all in all.

As for Windows Live Mail... I dunno, I like gmail better.

As for Windows Live _Messenger_ though... At first that seems like a really
odd question to me, but really, it's not that special.

In my experience IM software is one of the categories of software with the
highest geographically variation of any I've come across. In the US I hear
people actually use AIM, which is entirely unheard of in the rest of the
world. In Europe, you will find MSN is the status quo. In Australia Yahoo
Messenger seems to be pretty big (or so it seems), but I've never seen anyone
use it elsewhere.

The interesting thing about this kind of software is how it's not the
_software_ itself which is drawing users. It's who you can reach (ie,
userbase). So if everyone in your area is using product X, it doesn't matter
if product Y does everything ten times better, it will still be useless to you
unless you can reach the userbase of product X.

Whoever gets users first wins (because who seriously bothers to run several IM
applications?). And then it just seems to stay that way.

If I were to take my (severely) biased impression and generalize, I would say
everyone is using every product from Microsoft, with the noteworthy exception
of BizTalk. Linux can only be seen on netbooks or as a means of bypassing the
corporate web-filter. Oracle does exist, but only in very few companies which
rakes in billions. MySQL doesn't exist at all, except for in the bottom-tier
web-hosting basket.

But I'm not going to do that, and I suggest you don't take (what I assume is)
your Linux-hacker biased experiences and overgeneralise them either. The truth
is probably somewhere in the middle.

~~~
ugh
“In Europe, you will find MSN is the status quo.”

Not everywhere. Mostly ICQ here in Germany.

------
gvb
See _Seven Copies of Windows 7 Per Second: Fast! But How Fast?_
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1466549> for a fun way to put the numbers
in perspective.

(links to [http://technologizer.com/2010/06/27/seven-copies-of-
windows-...](http://technologizer.com/2010/06/27/seven-copies-of-
windows-7-per-second-fast-but-how-fast/))

------
eam
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. :)

~~~
CapitalistCartr
You might be too young to remember the days when MS ruled with an iron fist.
When they got IBM to use their DOS, they structured the licensing so that the
only affordable one was to pay MS for every box that went out the door, no
matter which OS was on it. So a shop could either sell only MS-DOS, or not
offer it at all, and any shop that didn't offer it couldn't stay in business,
once IBM "approved" of MS-DOS.

When they came out with any software, they chose the most confusing name
possible. "Windows" was a generic term for any the panes in windowing GUI,
until MS appropriated the word. Then came "Word", which sounded like about all
the competition out there. Once they had the OS market sewn up, they used that
to make their other software work better than anyone elses, with undocumented
APIs. Then they offered "bundles" which meant, if you used their OS, which of
course every business had to, you couldn't afford to turn down their other
offerings. This might sound like fair, tough competition, but the reality was
that they used their money and clout to run the competition out of business,
then their de facto monopoly to make a fortune.

And tough but fair, often gave way to threats. If a retailer didn't play ball,
getting rid of competition, they would pull their joint marketing/advertising
deals. If a small business came up with anything interesting, they'd swallow
it, or run it out of business by any means necessary. This did more to stifle
innovation for about 15 years than anything else.

This is only the beginning of why people don't like MS. If we were to all post
here, it would become an encyclopedia.

~~~
codingthewheel
Wow. You are completely misinformed and, I suspect, just trolling (and
presuming to instruct others) based upon events you had no connection with and
only understand second-hand from others. By the way, your allegation that
Microsoft "stole all the simple-sounding names" is just laughable. I'd dissect
the rest of your argument but frankly, I got tired of swatting flies like you
years ago. The only accurate statement in your entire rant? MS-DOS. And even
that's slanted.

~~~
xcombinator
He is not.If you think he is the misinformed person is you.

You can inform yourself.Search for DRDOS.Search for windows trademark
issues,lindows, you know what? they were an entire line of windows branded
products before MS, MS destroyed them all, you can search what happened to
them.

Windows is a generic word, it can't never be trademarked(unless you are rich
to get over the law), that applies to "word", "powerpoint", "project",
"excel", "exchange". A word in the English dictionary just can't be
trademarked, by law.

Maybe you were a kid then, but there was a time when "word" was not the most
used word processor, it was "WordPerfect", and people used Lotus123 instead of
"excel". What did MS did? They made windows but didn't let WordPerfect and
Lotus123 people(and everybody else, like compiler builders) use the windows
API, so MS had a 4 year period of advantage. Once they did, the high level
exposed API was slower than what MS used.

I'm tired too. When people don't know they don't know what they don't know.

~~~
archangel_one
Well, not quite. Lindows certainly wasn't around before MS. According to
Wikipedia the company was founded in 2001. Edit: On further reading, Microsoft
didn't manage to force them to change over in court - they just paid $20
million and Lindows changed over. Hardly "destroyed" them.

Windows is an English word, however that doesn't mean it doesn't enjoy some
trademark protection in an arrangement like "Microsoft Windows". The
protection is not as significant as it would be on an invented word (like,
say, "Microsoft") but it's still there if you come up with something that's
judged to be similar enough to cause confusion.

Similarly, try founding an IT company called Apple and see how far you get -
that's an English word too.

------
notirk
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.

------
whatusername
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 _the_ 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)

~~~
city41
I honestly didn't think anyone used FBChat. You are literally the first person
I've ever seen anywhere mention using it. Windows Live Messenger has a pretty
good stranglehold in the business world, which is a pretty large segment of IM
usage.

~~~
whatusername
:) Always nice to be "cutting edge". Facebook chat is crap - but it works
(most of the time at least). It drops out, the text input is tiny, you're tied
to FB, etc. But it's good enough. And I'll clarify that that is purely
personal use - never used it for work.

Do Microsoft have an Intranet focused IM solution ala Lotus Sametime? Notes
shops all seem to be running sametime, Exchange shops seem to be not running
IM or running public Messenger.

~~~
city41
Yes, Microsoft has Office Communicator. However, it's a terrible client, it's
about on feature parity with AIM version 0.5. It doesn't even turn
"<http://...> strings into hyperlinks.

------
sprout
I just bought a netbook with Windows 7 starter, and I did not wipe the Windows
partition.

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.

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.)

