I love numbers. I think they’re the quickest path to truth. But numbers can be misleading if used that way and I think that’s what Microsoft’s Corporate VP of Communications is doing in his post entitled Microsoft By The Numbers.
This isn’t a full refutation of his points and I even skip over a few for time but this should at least tell you that his overall theme is misleading. He’s using numbers out of context to make Microsoft look a lot stronger than it actually is.
Getting Started…
150,000,000
Number of Windows 7 licenses sold, making Windows 7 by far the fastest growing operating system in history.
Yes, but Vista sales were lack luster by Microsoft’s own admission and people need to upgrade after 9 years (XP original release date was 2001). So what Windows 7 sales indicate is that (a) there was pent-up demand for a decent OS and (b) Windows still doesn’t have any viable competitors (if you don’t want to deal with Apple). Neither of those facts are Microsoft specific strengths.
7.1 million
Projected iPad sales for 2010.
58 million
Projected netbook sales in 2010.
355 million
Projected PC sales in 2010.
Again the PC number is related to the above point. But it should be pointed out that he used “Projected” sales from IDC. What he doesn’t say is that IDC initially projected a 5.6% increase in IT spending for 2009 but that IT spending actually fell by 4.5% (which isn’t a criticism of IDC whose predictions were in-line with all the other firms). So projections don’t mean much.
On the Netbook issue he fails to mention that the growth of netbooks has been at the expense of Notebook PCs. Notebook revenue was down 7% in 2009 and that’s bad for Microsoft (who wants to sell full versions of Windows 7 not the starter version loaded on netbooks). Also his iPad source is from April 2nd and doesn’t take into account the products explosive initial sales.
<10
Percentage of US netbooks running Windows in 2008.
96
Percentage of US netbooks running Windows in 2009.
This is a somewhat fair point but netbook sales were only 11.4 million in 2008 so it was really a niche market. The bigger point is again that Microsoft is making 1/4th of the profit off netbooks as it would off a full scale PC or Notebook
0
Number of paying customers running on Windows Azure in November 2009.
10,000
Number of paying customers running on Windows Azure in June 2010.[source]
700,000
Number of students, teachers and staff using Microsoft’s cloud productivity tools in Kentucky public schools, the largest cloud deployment in the US.[source]
Well Azure wasn’t a product in 2009 and we don’t know what a “paying customer” is so the first two points don’t mean much. I tested Azure a few weeks back just to get a feel for how it works which would make me a paying customer but not an ongoing one (or one who paid more than $20 thus far)
As for the third number I notice there’s not a point for “2 Million” Zoho customers or “25 million” Google Apps Users.
9,000,000
Number of customer downloads of the Office 2010 beta prior to launch, the largest Microsoft beta program in history.
Office has a lot of users. That’s not news. The fact that the Office 2010 beta program was big only reflects that Microsoft allowed it to be that big.
21.4 million
Number of new Bing search users in one year. [Comscore report – requires subscription]
Again “Users” is a meaningless statistic. I try Bing every time they announce something new so I’m likely counted in that number but I use Google primarily. If anything this number is low because it means most of the billion users going to Google aren’t even giving Bing a chance.
24%
Linux Server market share in 2005.
33%
Predicted Linux Server market share for 2007 (made in 2005).
21.2%
Actual Linux Server market share, Q4 2009.
Again this is a meaningless number. If you look at the source it’s based on an IDC report on server hardware revenue. But anyone who understands basic computing knows that more expensive hardware is cheaper per user. On that note the majority of the $799 small business servers are running Windows while the majority of the $50,000 web servers are running Linux. So hardware revenue share does not equate to usage share
8.8 million
Global iPhone sales in Q1 2010.
21.5 million
Nokia smartphone sales in Q1 2010.
55 million
Total smartphone sales globally in Q1 2010.
439 million
Projected global smartphone sales in 2014.
Yes but Microsoft’s platform isn’t even in the market yet and when it gets there it will find itself facing a superior platform (Android) that’s cheaper than Microsoft’s offerings. There’s a lot of potential in smartphone growth but Microsoft isn’t poised to take advantage of it right now.
$5.7 Billion
Apple Net income for fiscal year ending Sep 2009.
$6.5 Billion
Google Net income for fiscal year ending Dec 2009.
$14.5 Billion
Microsoft Net Income for fiscal year ending June 2009.
But these are companies of vastly different size and comparing revenue without looking at size is misleading. Let’s look at the numbers with size taken into consideration.
Number of Employees
Microsoft: 93,000
Google: 20,621
Apple: 35,000
Net Income per Employee
Microsoft: $155,913
Google: $315,212
Apple: $162,857
So Google and Apple are much smaller companies making much more money per employee.
$23.0 billion
Total Microsoft revenue, FY2000.
$58.4 billion
Total Microsoft revenue, FY2009.
Yes but Microsoft has acquired at least 85 sizable companies since 2001 so the question is what was the combined revenue of all those companies vs. Microsoft’s revenue today?