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I’ve been hearing people say this since this incorrect essay was written almost 20 years ago Microsoft had 74% of the desktop then and has 72% today Microsoft

I’ve been hearing people say this since this incorrect essay was written almost 20 years ago Microsoft had 74% of the desktop then and has 72% today Microsoft had 0% of hosting then and has the world’s second largest share, 23%, today Microsoft had, in 2007, 18% presence share in console gaming. Today they have 65% They were one of the four tech orgs present at the presidential inauguration They have grown enormously in the time this essay claims they were dying

PetitPrince 2y ago
> Microsoft had, in 2007, 18% presence share in console gaming. Today they have 65% Source for this ? Also what do you mean by "presence" ? I had the impression that Sony was in a way better position than Microsoft, and they were both dwarfed by Nintendo by a substantial margin. (not that this invalidate your overall point).
- pjmlp 2y ago
  PlayStation 3 went down quite badly among game developers given how hard Cell was to program for, and users with the whole OtherOS fallout, this brought XBox 360 into the winning round. Microsoft lost the plot afterwards with XBox ONE against the Playstation 4, and even with the Series S|X, they never recovered on the hardware side. However this is kind of relative now, even if they don't public admit yet, the hardware is gone, they are going SEGA, and by being one of the largest game publishers, it hardly matters if the XBox console isn't going that well. In one year they already recovered all the money lost in the ABK deal and litigations.
Clubber 2y ago
>Microsoft had 74% of the desktop then and has 72% today That's only counting the latest version, if you include all Windows versions, it was in the high 90%. Today it's in the mid 90%. https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desk...
hajile 2y ago
Xbox One sold 57.9M and Series family has sold 28.3M by mid 2024. PS4 sold 117M and PS5 sold 61.7M by mid 2024. Nintendo claims 150.9M Switch consoles sold as of the end of 2024. That puts Microsoft at around 20.7%, Sony at 43%, and Nintendo at about 36.3%. Even if you exclude Nintendo with a "no-true-gamer" fallacy, Microsoft still has just 32.5% of the market. Windows was over 90% in 2007 and is just 72% today. If you include the super-important mobile market, Windows actual marketshare is something like 10-15% and even less if you include servers (where even most Azure servers run Linux).
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Yes, if we are counting only game consoles, now if we count game studios owned by each company, and they earnings across all platforms, it is a complete different picture. Microsoft owns PC, and even Valve has forced to emulate Windows/DirectX to have any games on SteamDeck. The amount of office worker typing Excel sheets on mobile phones is rather tiny.
  - hajile 2y ago
    Even if you look at just computer games, Windows has a smaller share than any time since the 1980s. If you include the massive mobile gaming market, Windows gaming is an even tinier percentage of the overall market (maybe even <10%).
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Have you ever played Windows games on the 1980's? That would be a first. What matters is where money is, and how much of those games trace back to Microsoft owned studios. Good example with mobile games though, as it is a good example of Valve's failure to capitalise on 80% of mobile games being run with OpenGL/Vulkan, on a Linux like platform, and yet they have to translate Win32/DirectX, as means to get games on SteamDeck.
    - JohnHaugeland 2y ago
      The PC’s share of gaming, according to EA, by dollars spent, is 23%, the second largest slice behind iOS, larger than any of the consoles Guesswork is rarely helpful
jasode 2y ago
>I’ve been hearing people say this since this incorrect essay was written almost 20 years ago Microsoft had [...list of significant statistics...] Whenever someone writes a provocative article about something being "dead", they are almost always talking about influence and mindshare -- rather than business statistics. Yes, Microsoft is still a huge behemoth being a $3+ trillion cap company with a overwhelming marketshare of Windows & Office installations but the apex of their "industry influence" was the 1990s during the "Wintel" days before the internet came along. That 1980s/1990s was the time period when Bill Gates was CEO and "everybody was scared of Microsoft". Since, then they ... lost the browser wars (both old IE and new IE with Trident engine failed), lost the mobile shift (Windows phones failed), is a distant #2 in search engine market. Microsoft is somewhat back in the influence game with AI but that's because they partnered with OpenAI rather than build something internally. Arguably, it's Meta that gets more noise with LLAMA, and China's High-Flyer getting everybody's attention with DeepSeek-R1. That's the type of "alive vs dead" PG is writing about. The "dead" being a writer's rhetorical flourish rather than a business status is the same when applied to "IBM is dead". In pure business metrics, IBM is still a giant company with $65 billion in revenue and $7 in profits. The airlines, major banks, and credit-card companies still run millions of transactions through IBM Z mainframes. Companies are still buying and upgrading expensive new Z mainframes. But the rhetorical "dead" means IBM's apex of influence was 1960s & 1970s. The later IBM trying to relevant with the newer tech like Watson and blockchain service doesn't matter to people. Maybe writers should stop using "dead" as rhetorical technique because it just confuses readers. E.g. saying something like "DirecTV is dead" makes people scratch their head when they just watched a game on the satellite service last night. How would that be possible if it was truly dead?!?
- donny2018 2y ago
  You are missing a lot of stuff Microsoft is doing. Azure, .NET, server tools, databases, VS Code, TypeScript, GitHub, (yes, OpenAI), gaming, XBox, desktop, business tools, Surface, Microsoft 365, Teams and lots more. I'd say much of the things they are doing is quite "fresh" and it's more relevant as it has ever been. There is a reason it's market cap is bigger than Google's and Amazon's, and its downfall has been long overturned. >with a overwhelming marketshare of Windows & Office installations It's interesting that you mention it, as none of these are very important on their own to today's Microsoft if you check their latest quarterly reports.
dijit 2y ago
> Microsoft had 74% of the desktop then and has 72% today Microsoft had 90%+ of desktop penetration in 2008; in fact, it made news that it had slipped to below that at the end of 2008.[0][1] Now it's around 70%, but seems to be improving?[2] [0]: https://www.osnews.com/story/20605/windows-market-share-slips-below-90/ https://www.osnews.com/story/20605/windows-market-share-slip... [1]: https://www.computerworld.com/article/1367310/windows-market-share-dives-below-90-for-first-time.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/1367310/windows-market... [2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-share-of-windows-7/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-sha...

PetitPrince 2y ago

> Microsoft had, in 2007, 18% presence share in console gaming. Today they have 65% Source for this ? Also what do you mean by "presence" ? I had the impression that Sony was in a way better position than Microsoft, and they were both dwarfed by Nintendo by a substantial margin. (not that this invalidate your overall point).

pjmlp 2y ago
PlayStation 3 went down quite badly among game developers given how hard Cell was to program for, and users with the whole OtherOS fallout, this brought XBox 360 into the winning round. Microsoft lost the plot afterwards with XBox ONE against the Playstation 4, and even with the Series S|X, they never recovered on the hardware side. However this is kind of relative now, even if they don't public admit yet, the hardware is gone, they are going SEGA, and by being one of the largest game publishers, it hardly matters if the XBox console isn't going that well. In one year they already recovered all the money lost in the ABK deal and litigations.

Clubber 2y ago

>Microsoft had 74% of the desktop then and has 72% today That's only counting the latest version, if you include all Windows versions, it was in the high 90%. Today it's in the mid 90%. https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desk...

hajile 2y ago

Xbox One sold 57.9M and Series family has sold 28.3M by mid 2024. PS4 sold 117M and PS5 sold 61.7M by mid 2024. Nintendo claims 150.9M Switch consoles sold as of the end of 2024. That puts Microsoft at around 20.7%, Sony at 43%, and Nintendo at about 36.3%. Even if you exclude Nintendo with a "no-true-gamer" fallacy, Microsoft still has just 32.5% of the market. Windows was over 90% in 2007 and is just 72% today. If you include the super-important mobile market, Windows actual marketshare is something like 10-15% and even less if you include servers (where even most Azure servers run Linux).

pjmlp 2y ago
Yes, if we are counting only game consoles, now if we count game studios owned by each company, and they earnings across all platforms, it is a complete different picture. Microsoft owns PC, and even Valve has forced to emulate Windows/DirectX to have any games on SteamDeck. The amount of office worker typing Excel sheets on mobile phones is rather tiny.
- hajile 2y ago
  Even if you look at just computer games, Windows has a smaller share than any time since the 1980s. If you include the massive mobile gaming market, Windows gaming is an even tinier percentage of the overall market (maybe even <10%).
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Have you ever played Windows games on the 1980's? That would be a first. What matters is where money is, and how much of those games trace back to Microsoft owned studios. Good example with mobile games though, as it is a good example of Valve's failure to capitalise on 80% of mobile games being run with OpenGL/Vulkan, on a Linux like platform, and yet they have to translate Win32/DirectX, as means to get games on SteamDeck.
  - JohnHaugeland 2y ago
    The PC’s share of gaming, according to EA, by dollars spent, is 23%, the second largest slice behind iOS, larger than any of the consoles Guesswork is rarely helpful

jasode 2y ago

>I’ve been hearing people say this since this incorrect essay was written almost 20 years ago Microsoft had [...list of significant statistics...] Whenever someone writes a provocative article about something being "dead", they are almost always talking about influence and mindshare -- rather than business statistics. Yes, Microsoft is still a huge behemoth being a $3+ trillion cap company with a overwhelming marketshare of Windows & Office installations but the apex of their "industry influence" was the 1990s during the "Wintel" days before the internet came along. That 1980s/1990s was the time period when Bill Gates was CEO and "everybody was scared of Microsoft". Since, then they ... lost the browser wars (both old IE and new IE with Trident engine failed), lost the mobile shift (Windows phones failed), is a distant #2 in search engine market. Microsoft is somewhat back in the influence game with AI but that's because they partnered with OpenAI rather than build something internally. Arguably, it's Meta that gets more noise with LLAMA, and China's High-Flyer getting everybody's attention with DeepSeek-R1. That's the type of "alive vs dead" PG is writing about. The "dead" being a writer's rhetorical flourish rather than a business status is the same when applied to "IBM is dead". In pure business metrics, IBM is still a giant company with $65 billion in revenue and $7 in profits. The airlines, major banks, and credit-card companies still run millions of transactions through IBM Z mainframes. Companies are still buying and upgrading expensive new Z mainframes. But the rhetorical "dead" means IBM's apex of influence was 1960s & 1970s. The later IBM trying to relevant with the newer tech like Watson and blockchain service doesn't matter to people. Maybe writers should stop using "dead" as rhetorical technique because it just confuses readers. E.g. saying something like "DirecTV is dead" makes people scratch their head when they just watched a game on the satellite service last night. How would that be possible if it was truly dead?!?

donny2018 2y ago
You are missing a lot of stuff Microsoft is doing. Azure, .NET, server tools, databases, VS Code, TypeScript, GitHub, (yes, OpenAI), gaming, XBox, desktop, business tools, Surface, Microsoft 365, Teams and lots more. I'd say much of the things they are doing is quite "fresh" and it's more relevant as it has ever been. There is a reason it's market cap is bigger than Google's and Amazon's, and its downfall has been long overturned. >with a overwhelming marketshare of Windows & Office installations It's interesting that you mention it, as none of these are very important on their own to today's Microsoft if you check their latest quarterly reports.

dijit 2y ago

> Microsoft had 74% of the desktop then and has 72% today Microsoft had 90%+ of desktop penetration in 2008; in fact, it made news that it had slipped to below that at the end of 2008.[0][1] Now it's around 70%, but seems to be improving?[2] [0]: https://www.osnews.com/story/20605/windows-market-share-slips-below-90/ https://www.osnews.com/story/20605/windows-market-share-slip... [1]: https://www.computerworld.com/article/1367310/windows-market-share-dives-below-90-for-first-time.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/1367310/windows-market... [2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-share-of-windows-7/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-sha...