4 ms·

The most striking statistic to me was Microsoft's drop from 97% to 20% over the past 12 years.

by Hawkee 14y ago

keithpeter 14y ago
Because the range of devices we decide to include has increased?
- rayiner 14y ago
  I think a more appropriate charecterization is that the range of devices people use for daily computing has expanded.
  - kvb 14y ago
    If someone is using an Android phone as a glorified feature phone, does that still count as "computing"?
rhplus 14y ago
How many devices did the average consumer have in 2000 (a desktop PC, maybe a game console, maybe a laptop, a cable box) compared to now (an MP3 player, a smartphone, a laptop, a tablet, an e-reader, a game console, an internet TV box, in car computer, a wifi router, a backup NAS, etc). How many global consumers (think BRIC) are buying devices now that couldn't dream of it in the early 2000s? Microsoft's share of the pie has dropped, but the pie has exploded in size.
- justincormack 14y ago
  Despite that MS has not had an explosion in sales, the outcome they were hoping for. They probably wouldn't mind a fall in market share so much if their sales had still quadrupled.
  - rhplus 14y ago
    You're right, their sales haven't quadrupled, but to be fair, across the company they haven't remained stagnant either. The best proxy I could find for sales was annual revenue, and that shows 3.2x growth for the 12 year period: FY 2000: $22.96 billion FY 2012: $73.72 billion Now, I'm sure financial geeks will pick holes in this simple comparison. And of course I realize that company revenue is heavily weighted by Windows and Office, and increasingly servers and tools, and much less so by direct consumer purchases. [2000] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2000/jul00/q00-4erpr.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2000/jul00/q00-4e... [2012] http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2012/jul12/07-19fy12Q4earningsPR.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2012/jul12/07-19fy...

The most striking statistic to me was Microsoft's drop from 97% to 20% over the past 12 years.

by Hawkee 14y ago

The most striking statistic to me was Microsoft's drop from 97% to 20% over the past 12 years.

keithpeter 14y ago

Because the range of devices we decide to include has increased?

rayiner 14y ago
I think a more appropriate charecterization is that the range of devices people use for daily computing has expanded.
- kvb 14y ago
  If someone is using an Android phone as a glorified feature phone, does that still count as "computing"?

rhplus 14y ago

How many devices did the average consumer have in 2000 (a desktop PC, maybe a game console, maybe a laptop, a cable box) compared to now (an MP3 player, a smartphone, a laptop, a tablet, an e-reader, a game console, an internet TV box, in car computer, a wifi router, a backup NAS, etc). How many global consumers (think BRIC) are buying devices now that couldn't dream of it in the early 2000s? Microsoft's share of the pie has dropped, but the pie has exploded in size.

justincormack 14y ago
Despite that MS has not had an explosion in sales, the outcome they were hoping for. They probably wouldn't mind a fall in market share so much if their sales had still quadrupled.
- rhplus 14y ago
  You're right, their sales haven't quadrupled, but to be fair, across the company they haven't remained stagnant either. The best proxy I could find for sales was annual revenue, and that shows 3.2x growth for the 12 year period: FY 2000: $22.96 billion FY 2012: $73.72 billion Now, I'm sure financial geeks will pick holes in this simple comparison. And of course I realize that company revenue is heavily weighted by Windows and Office, and increasingly servers and tools, and much less so by direct consumer purchases. [2000] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2000/jul00/q00-4erpr.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2000/jul00/q00-4e... [2012] http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2012/jul12/07-19fy12Q4earningsPR.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2012/jul12/07-19fy...