It's worth noting that Windows Server lives in a different category, and so it actually counts against Windows being a cash cow in this case. Its category, which includes SQL Server, is the one that beat out "Windows and Windows Live".
To put it another way, Windows was partially beaten by another Windows for cash cow status.
Actually the Windows division of Microsoft is still the second most profitable division of Microsoft. The Windows divison is 3rd in revenue, 2nd in cash.
Cash and Revenues are two totally different things on financial statements, like the ones pictured in the article. jamesredman is completely right that the article is incorrectly titled. Cash cow refers to something that generates free cash flow and this article misinterprets that to mean revenues, which actually have costs associated with them and don't represent cash flows.
Sure would like to know where Visual Studio falls in this. I would think giving away all versions of VS would only benefit Windows and Server sales by encouraging more developers.
I don't think they ever directly publish that, but they did publish in 2010, producers of Visual Studio extensions brought in over $400 million in revenue. Considering the people buying those extensions have a full version of Visual Studio, and the cost of VS and MSDN subscriptions, I would not be surprised if those two things account for most of that $5 billion.
VS Express is a free, fully featured IDE. What Pro/Ultimate features would really attract a new set of Windows developers? By the time you need Ultimate features, you can probably afford Ultimate.
Consumers can easily see alternatives to MS products are better. It's only a matter of time; MS lost that contest.
They are now resigned to use bogus patents to get a piece of the future they will not otherwise be a part of. The alternatives to their ridiculous continous upgrade path are more functional, easy enough to use and more cost effective.
When we manage to show this to business market, MS is in big trouble. Cost effectiveness and ease of deployment and use. MS can be beaten on these fronts. And they will be. In time.
Blaming the decline in Windows revenue on the floods? Priceless. You can't get around the fact that they're facing their first real competition in the consumer PC space and that for a lot of consumer use cases, the average $500 Windows laptop compares pretty poorly to a tablet.
To put it another way, Windows was partially beaten by another Windows for cash cow status.
So don't count it out just yet.