4 ms·
It's fair to wonder what is truly motivating Microsoft executives, but you can follow the money fairly easily. In their quarterly earnings reports you can see
by cwhiz 6y ago
It's fair to wonder what is truly motivating Microsoft executives, but you can follow the money fairly easily.
In their quarterly earnings reports you can see that about 1/3 of their revenue is from "more personal computing."[0] We know that this category includes Windows licensing, devices (Surface, etc), gaming, and search. About $11 billion per quarter, on average.
They don't neatly break this down in their report, as far as I can see, but some other internet sleuths have made educated guesses based on things that are directly reported. As far as anyone can guess, Windows is no more than 10-15% of Microsoft revenue.
It seems fairly obvious to me that Windows is no longer the backbone of Microsoft. 10-15% still represents billions of dollars, but I think Microsoft would be perfectly content to replace all of that Windows revenue with O365 licenses or Azure billings.
[0]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2020-Q1/segment-revenues https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2020-Q1...
- dcolkitt 6y agoI agree, that despite it not being the future of the company, Windows and controlling the desktop is still a pretty bit contributor to the company's valuation. It would be pretty bad for MSFT if Windows was vaporized tomorrow. But I think Microsoft is much less paranoid, simply because desktop is a much less attractive target. It's good owning it today, but why would any potential competitor go to war to establish a beachhead in a slowly dying market? Certainly the other big tech companies are much more potentially threatening to MS today. Nobody in 1999 could hit as hard as Google, Amazon, Apple or even Facebook could today. But why would they even bother? Defending Windows is like Britain worrying about defending Gibraltar. It's still somewhat strategically important, but much less so than in the past. Because of that legacy, it's already defended way past the point of its value to any rational adversary.
- tomnipotent 6y ago> Windows is no more than 10-15% of Microsoft revenue. Microsoft has more or less abolished Windows as a separate business unit. https://www.ft.com/content/5bf8b952-3396-11e8-b5bf-23cb17fd1498 https://www.ft.com/content/5bf8b952-3396-11e8-b5bf-23cb17fd1...