MS biggest cash cows since years are not their operating systems, but their office suite(s), server licences, corporate service programs and potentially also their IP revenues (including other OS like e.g. Android HW manufacturers) - key to that might be their OS dominance in the corporate PC / desktop world.
To see / visualize that this is changing and to make these numbers more useful, they need to be combined with e.g. device numbers to get to a level of market penetration / share (might also need to be broken into corporate / personal). It's quite a different situation for a company selling your closely OS-linked solutions to almost every company / PC user when you're holding >75% market share in the OS segment or when your market share has dropped to 40%+ overall. This effect might intensify over the next years with BYO, more powerful handheld devices etc.
The PC market (including Macs) has grown a lot in 3 years, but Microsoft sold as many Windows 8 copies in the first 6 months as it did with Windows 7 (as the article shows). For Windows 8 to be as popular as Windows 7, it should’ve sold a lot more copies because the market is much bigger than 3 years a go. Whereas Windows95 was a product which consumers lined up for, few people buy a Windows 8 upgrade.
Smartphones and tablets outsell PCs, but the Windows mobile platforms hasn’t had much success. Even Windows’ PC market share has been declining, while in the last 5 years Mac install base has tripled.
Yeah but you don't change your PC every single year. At least I guess the average PC life is somewhere between 2 years and 3 years nowadays on average (i have no source but that's my impression). Smartphone owners tend to change theirs every year or so. Smartphones have become a commodity and are considered as disposable. PCs, not as much. It does not really make sense to compare both markets. They don't overlap that much.
I’m perfectly fine with my 6-year old PC (built with Q6600, top cpu at the time).
And it copes with most of my work and runs most games on medium-high quality settings. Though I have upgraded GPU a couple of times, it didn’t require a windows reinstall or a new license.
Edit: in an average office I can usually see 5-10-years old PCs, a lot of them running WindowsXP, not because W7 or W8 is crap, but because these machines do their job and no one bothers to upgrade/update them while they are still in working state.
“you don't change your PC every single year. At least I guess the average PC life is somewhere between 2 years and 3 years nowadays on average [...] Smartphone owners tend to change theirs every year or so.”
I think it’s closer to 5 years for personal computers and 2 years for smartphones. But even if your estimate is more accurate, that’s a problem for Microsoft. They’d love for people to buy a new PC every year, that’s when they make money on licenses. Consumers don’t buy Windows upgrades anymore.
“It does not really make sense to compare both markets [PCs and mobile devices.”
Windows is not just for PCs, Windows also ships on smartphones and tablets. The problem is that consumers aren’t buying those devices, instead they buy Apple and Samsung devices, from which Microsoft gets a very small cut.
“[The PC and mobile devices markets] don't overlap that much.”
Mobile devices cannibalize the PC market. The PC market is shrinking and many people choose not to replace their old PC but to buy a tablet.
> Smartphone owners tend to change theirs every year or so. Smartphones have become a commodity and are considered as disposable.
This doesn't make sense. A smartphone costs more than the average PC. Unless these people are buying Macbooks, how do they get away with buying a $500+ phone every year?
By many other countries, you just mean the USA right? What other countries practice weird contract subsidies?
The only reason most people upgrade their phone more often than their PC is because they use it more. Why upgrade a PC that is just sitting in the corner collecting dust anyways?
In Japan you don't pay the price of the phone itself, you pay it through your 2 years contract with the provider. And that's a huge market.
I don't think PC collect dusts. You need to type a report for school/work ? You need to print stuff ? You need to edit your pictures ? You need to develop software ? Smartphones cannot help you there.
Let's be realistic a second, smartphones are never going to replace ALL PC usage. People just use different systems for different things, depending on where they are.
And the "only" reason why people replace their smartphones more often is because it's cheap through contracts and because its a fashion to show off your smartphone nowadays for most young people. Don't tell me it's because it runs faster, because 2-3 years old models still work perfectly for all intended purposes.
Fair enough. I live in Asia also and haven't seen this practiced much even in Europe. I haven't lived with these subsidies in a long time, and I always pay full price for my phones (unless my employer gives me one). No idea about the Japanese market; it is very unique in too many ways that isn't generalize-able to the rest of the world.
We've (in unsubsidized China) been upgrading smartphones because (a) they are incredibly useful, and (b) the hardware is advancing at a rapid clip like PCs used to...the phone I had 2-3 years ago is a relic compared to the one I have now.
How many iPads have you seen at Starbucks recently with those keyboard cases used by those kids...writing reports? Much of the under 10 crowd hasn't even used a PC yet, they are just used to doing everything on the tablet (now mostly iPad). There is your PC future.
Please, don't make me laugh with tablets being the PC future. We all know the future will be fragmented. There will be space for PC, space for tablets, space for smartphones and google-like glasses because all of this will be extremely cheap and there will be advantages to have them all instead of having just one.
But one only has time to use so many devices, so many you have a PC in the office and only a tablet at home, to go along with your phone, glasses, watch, TV, ... You might have a laptop that you haven't upgraded in 5 years, so no need to upgrade that.
The PC is not going away, but it's not going to be the ubiquitous consumer device it once was. But if you have a feeling otherwise, you should buy PC stocks; they are incredibly cheap for what you think will exist in a vibrant market.
Many countries in EU, for example. In Poland you can have new smartphone every year for $0.5. Because you pay for calls the same amount whether you get new phone or not it's stupid not to get one. Many people sell the previous, still perfectly fine device.
If your volume is growing at a rate that's much smaller than the market at a whole, yes, in a sense you're dying.
Windows is still shipping in volume, but its relevance is withering. The less relevant it becomes, the harder it is to command its high price, and that's the real problem for Microsoft.
The most interesting part to me is the Windows 1.0 screenshot at the very top of the article. They were using the "mobile menu" icon doohicky/convention at the top left. I wonder what that actually did.
It's probably the same "system menu" that's been in all later versions of Windows (though increasingly hidden). It's the thing that gives you a menu with choices to maximize, restore, minimize, move, resize and close the window. Pops up with Alt+Space. Very useful when you've got a window that has ended up off the screen somewhere (so you can't move it back with the mouse), or if you're forced to use the keyboard alone.
