Microsoft Corp. said on Monday that retail and new PC sales of Windows XP, its flagship operating system, have grown to more than 210 million copies since the product was launched two and a half years ago. The world’s largest software maker also unveiled on Monday the latest version of its anti-piracy software for digital files, music and movies, which it said would work with a wider class of online services and devices. In the meantime, a new generation of PCs based on Microsoft’s next operating system won’t arrive until perhaps 2006, but engineers at a conference in Seattle this week will learn how to build the new machines.
Microsoft Sells 210 mln Copies of Windows XP
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They sell 210 million copies yet they complain about the fact that not enough people upgrade? MS really has a strange perspective of the world. They need to come down from their high horses and take a look around, the world doesn’t evolve around them.
210 million copies main account for offices very few % goes to the desktop. Mainly in South east asia 90% Microsoft product is pirated.
Let’s take Be. If M$ would not have put giant pine tree in Be inc wheel and if Be did have only 1% of M$ market:
it would mean 2M unit of sale of the OS, say at 50$ it mean revenue of 100M$. Be at the end was burning 1.5M/month.
100M – 12 * 1.5M = 82M$ of profit (let say 64M$ if we say they release a OS each 2 year or even 46M$ if we put that on 3 year).
Yet be got peanut from palm (without them palm stock would be on the grounf now) and a joke illegal settlement from M$ last mole at Be inc.
And just think… how many companies have they done this to? Yet I hear some say that companies like MS are major pillars of the economy, and major employers, without which fewer jobs would be available.
Major pillars? Yeah, right. They make money, then they lock away huge amounts of it as safety. Since when is stagnant money good for the economy? Break the big company in to a loooot of medium companies, and watch the cash start flowing. At the same time, you’ll see more employment. Not that MS doesn’t give jobs to a lot of people, but think of how many more jobs there’d be if it there were more companies!
210 million out of how many pc users, that is how many % official xp users?
47% of all pc users (zeitgeist) use XP, compared to the percentage calculated above, how many % of XP users paid for their copy?
If one would count all the known linux rollouts, how would that compare
…
I’m not good at guessing, but maybe someone else feels lucky
On what planet is million abbreviated “mln”?? How about just using the letter, “M”… as in “210M Copies of Windows”.
That makes much more sense.
XP is not the best OS out there and I cannot believe MS numbers. I’ve known many people who will not update to XP because of security problems. Most businesses stay on Win2000 and many are going to Linux. All I know is that I’m not going to Longhorn.
Most businesses stay on Win2000 and many are going to Linux.
Most businesses had Windows 9x on their desktops before the introduction of XP.
210,000,000 * 83 / 3,000 = 5,810,000
Ok, so 210 million copies, times the price ($83, I’ll call that their average revenue per copy), and divided by the sopposed 3,000 Windows developers I get almost 6 million dollars. Now, supposing it costs 6 million dollars per employee over the past say 6 years they would be a valid competitive business (one that makes an economic profit of $0). However, I doubt it really costs that much.
Was my math correct?
MS does not force anyone to upgrade. I know people that are still using NT4 and 95 becasue they just work. I was using an NT4 workstation about a year ago on a low end PC and I think it made a great workstation. I didn’t have any trouble installing and using all the software I needed for it. It was fast on the low end hardware I was using it for. Not till I replaced the workstation did I upgrade the version of windows. Your comment is a troll.
All right, so if you compare Windows XP’s 210 million copies to OS X’s 10+ million copies, that puts OS X in just a hair under 5% of the XP/X market. That’s why the “Apple is at ~1.something%” market share argument doesn’t make sense — most consumer software developers are targeting either XP or OS X now. So 5% is still not a bad number — certainly better than under 2%.
Then of course there’s the actual sales numbers for companies who do important Mac software — Adobe for example sells 25% to Mac consumers that that’s including ALL of Adobe’s Windows-only product lines. If you only look at, say, Photoshop, I bet the Mac percentage is much higher.
I think Microsoft’s sales numbers for XP are good, but not great (from a pro-MS point of view). EVERYONE should be using XP by now — earlier versions of Windows are garbage. So what’s the hold up? Are people waiting for Longhorn now? Or do some folks just not care?
Jared
Quote:
“210,000,000 * 83 / 3,000 = 5,810,000
Ok, so 210 million copies, times the price ($83, I’ll call that their average revenue per copy), and divided by the sopposed 3,000 Windows developers I get almost 6 million dollars. Now, supposing it costs 6 million dollars per employee over the past say 6 years they would be a valid competitive business (one that makes an economic profit of $0). However, I doubt it really costs that much.
Was my math correct?”
Your math isn’t correct.
You think that the purpose of a business is to break even.
It’s not, the purpose of a business (well, most of them) is to make money.
“Most businesses stay on Win2000 and many are going to Linux.”
“Most businesses had Windows 9x on their desktops before the introduction of XP.”
Very true. Many more systems were upgraded from 98 to XP, than from 98 to 2000. The systems already on 2000 at the introduction of XP were seldom upgraded.
How it all shakes out when Longhorn is released is likely to be a matter of at what cost.
With the current “warchest” of cash MS has stashed away, damn near anything is possible. Though somewhat unlikely to happen; MS could actually give Longhorn away just to kill the spread of Linux for another decade or two. Never say never, as they can certainly afford it.
People often lose site of the idea MS sells many other things other than OS’s. Giving away an OS for little or nothing, might not qualify be the craziest thing MS has done over the past 20 years.
Also to elaborate: I know it is cool to pick on MS for buggy software, but the truth is that considering MS has, for the most part managed to mantain backwards _and_ forwards compatibility from 95 to 04 thier code is suprisinly both fast and stable. It seems to me that upgrade lock in is something that Linux distros are worse offenders than MS. If I want to upgrade stuff on my Linunx distro, not always but often it is much easier to just install a newer version of the distro.
For the people complaining about having to upgrade to Longhorn, I bet some of you are the same people that complain every time they push back the release date.
Even if LH does break binary compatibility (which it won’t) would 1 time in 11 years be too tough to deal with?
All the linux apps I use are recompiled for my upgrade every 6 months!
At that rate that would mean binaries have to be recompiled for windows 22 times less often than Linux, but this is a reason to bash… Microsoft?
If you want to argue that people should stop using MS fine, but at least use better reasons. There _are_ good reasons not to use MS, but bashing MS for things that they seem to do better than everyone else just makes your case for not using them look silly.
You think that the purpose of a business is to break even.
It’s not, the purpose of a business (well, most of them) is to make money.
There was a time when the main goal was to contribute something to the community while making a decent living. I guess some of us still live in that illusion. Sigh.
You know very well that MS (as most large software companies) charge way too much money for their products. Products which costs pretty much nothing to reproduce.
Most businesses stay on Win2000 and many are going to Linux.
And I wonder how many of those 210M were in fact companies who bought a machine with XP and downgraded to 2000 (IIRC an XP license is also a 2000 license).
There was a time when the main goal was to contribute something to the community while making a decent living. I guess some of us still live in that illusion. Sigh.
I am really sick of people idealizing the past. What time was this rain? It certainly didn’t happen at any point during US history.
The “robber barons” of the 1800s. The tobacco industry of the 1900s. These are just a few examples.
Mac OS X may have a slightly higher percentage of the market if you only compare it to Windows XP, but don’t forget how many people are still using earlier versions of Windows.
Also, comparing the sales of Adobe products proves nothing, as the Macintosh has a strong history in the graphical arts. I’m sure the Macintosh community has a higher percentage of Photoshop users than does the Windows community, although I have no hard facts to back this up, just what I’ve observed.
…just turn off the superfluous stuff in XP, and what you get is Windows 2000 with a newer kernel.
I guess some of us still live in that illusion.
Yup, some of you are well entrenched in a fantasy land.
Sigh.
XP is different enough under the hood that you would still have to run your entire corporate application suite through a strenuous compatibility check.
They may be close….but they are not the same.
My recollection of economics (which is hazy now) is that, if a market economy is working efficiently, an economic rent should be 0 when you take into account opportunity cost. If you are making more than 0, then that amounts to a super profit, usually only chargeable by monopolies, or near monopolies.
Could someone who studied economics more recently than I clarify my fuzzy thinking?
Matt
MS is counting every copy of XP home licensed to OEM’s as well as boxes sold retail. A significant percentage computers with Windows pre-installed are reformatted with company-wide standard system images, and actually have 2 or more Windows licenses. Think site license.
The new Dell I am using now had XP on it, and I promptly reformatted and installed Win2k (work…my home box is Gentoo). The same is done to all new pc’s at my work.
Just a thought, most likely an acurate one too.
that retail and new PC sales of Windows XP, its flagship operating system, have grown to more than 210 million copies since the product was launched two and a half years ago
Hardly surprising when Microsoft are forcing PC makers to “recommend Microsoft Windows XP”. That’s monopoly power for you.
Lets do another calculation:
– Windows XP costs € 50
– A developer costs € 20.000 per month
– Microsoft has worked on Windows XP for 2 years
– 210.000.000 copies of Windows have been sold
– 4.000 developers work on Windows
Then,
Profit=
gains-losses=
50*210.000.000-20.000*12*4.000*2=
€ 8.100.000.000
Per copy that would be € 38 which is 77%. That is not very unlikely as Microsoft has revealed some time ago that 80% of the price of Windows is profit.
Now let’s imagine a healthy market in which MS has no monopoly but, say, 60% market share. Then the price of Windows would be, including the fact that less copies of Windows would be sold:
(20.000*12*4.000*2)/(210.000.000*60%/90%) = € 17.
If the average price of Windows were € 100, thus twice as high, that would mean that the development costs twice as much too (80% is revenue according to MS itself). So even then a copy should not cost more than about € 35.
My calculations might be nonsense, as I am not an economist, but still I can’t even imagine how the current price of Windows could ever be justified even by economists if 80% of the money goes to bank accounts of MS and the high people of it.
Excuse my English, as Dutch is my mother language, but one mistake is intended 😉
You think that the purpose of a business is to break even. It’s not, the purpose of a business (well, most of them) is to make money.
The above quote was in response to a back-of-the-envelope calculation that estimated the revenue per Windows developer to be on the order of $6 million. Now, the quote is absolutely right that the purpose of a company is to accumulate as much profit as they possibly can. However, it is not at all in the interests of governments to encourage commercial policies that allow for this level of inefficiency.
Under a governmental system that preserved the ability of nascent companies to compete on equal footing with more entrenched companies, perhaps customers would see prices start to fall as viable alternatives emerged. (notice how, as economies of scale have ramped up, hardware costs have fallen precipitously over the past decade, while software costs have increased) Perhaps this revenue, in being distributed to other companies, would create jobs, rather than languish in MS’s coffers (or worse yet, be used for other strong-arm anti-competitive efforts.) Perhaps standards would emerge that were actually carefully followed, rather than butchered by proprietary implementations. Perhaps Microsoft’s own efforts that soak up some of these surplus profits will be recognized as not worthy of completing.
I dont mean to bash on MS too much though, because their products are well constructed by talented people. However, complacency has slowed down the innovation rate at MS. Ballmer himself has admitted, one of their largest competitors is their own installed legacy product base.
There has always been people with no sense of moral. And I’m not saying that everything was better in the past, because some things are a lot better now. But when it comes to how people in sociaty treat each other today the world has become a lot more egocentric. You just need to go back 10 years in time to realise this.
The reasons for this are many, I won’t bring them up now. But my point was that it scares me when people just allow companies to act like jerks with the excuse that “Well, that’s the way it works. Besides they only want to make money.”. What kind of an excuse is that? We create “the way it works”, every single human being are responsible for “the way it works”, it’s not something that came falling down from the sky, it’s something we created and it’s something we can change if we just turn off the reality shows for a while and start thinking. And the fact that a company “just wants to make money” is no excuse for treating people like dirt. Lies and greedyness is something we should try to get rid of, not accept because it will grow larger and larger if we don’t do anything about it.
Call me naive, but I’d like to question who’s being naive here? The people that think that “as long as I play by the rules they create for me, nothing bad will happend” or the people that create the rules?
You seem to think that everything is getting better. That’s just as bad as thinking that everything is getting worse.
You don’t understand my point. The point is that developer’s want to sell X amount of copies of their software at Y price so they make Z amount of profit. The people that are buying the most new software are using new OSes. This includes Windows XP, OS X, and Linux. Linux still doesn’t really cater to the consumer market (at least the $$$-spending consumer market), so we’re really only looking at XP vs. OS X. And, if you do that, then suddenly the Mac is at 5% of the market. Hmmm….looks better than 1-2%, doesn’t it?
We all know which OS people use is determined by 2 things: the hardware they buy and the software that runs on it. If Windows’ lead in terms of software-availability is slipping, then Windows loses its competitive edge. The more software that’s available for OS X and Linux, the less reason there is to use Windows. So that’s why I brought up this point: XP doesn’t seem to be selling as well as it should be.
Which is just fine by my book, of course.
But I’m not an MS shareholder.
Regards,
Jared
Just a quick note… It is very possible that this figure is not actually *sales*. Microsoft do this a lot; they quote shipments to retailers/OEMs as sales.
Just because you give them 50 million copies, doesn’t mean that they can sell them all.
Congratulations to Microsoft…
Now they have money for development (they had it before this but…)
But my point was that it scares me when people just allow companies to act like jerks with the excuse that “Well, that’s the way it works. Besides they only want to make money.”.
So, what would you have us do then? Boycott any company who is involved in shady business practices? If we all did that, not many of us would have cable, phone, or electricity service for that matter?
Wanna boycott companies who outsource jobs to India? Well, that includes AMD, Intel, and Apple, so where the hell is your next computer coming from?
210’000’000 copies of Windows XP? This is a very nice number. And Microsoft can be happy with the money they earn with Windows XP.
But one thing is sure:
While we live in a very fast time, the companies and user have lowered down their speed of updating/upgrading the Windows OS.
The reasons for that are sure diffrend for each user. But I personaly think, that Windows XP does not offer enought attraction to switch to it, when you are already using Windows 2000. And I personaly think as well, that many corporations have just finished migrating to Windows 2000 and they are sure not going again to start a new migration just because of some small features, wich do not bring them any big business benefit.
For Microsoft this is not a good thing. Since they have a new Windows OS in development, they need now to learn how to influence that market to switch faster and more often to new Windows versions. And they need to influence the market to wait that long for Windows Longhorn. And the market just started to look at Linux and some are activly switching to Linux. If this switch to Linux is good or bad, is another storry. But normaly such switches take some time to finish and they take some time until the market knows if this is bad. But as long as companies are switching and you hear there and there about success stories, this is not good for Microsoft.
The fact that Windows has a bad reputation, does not help Microsoft in this task as well. Most of the bad reputation is about Windows crashing all the time and that kind of things. But this is not true anymore! Windows XP and Windows 2003 are the most stable Windows version ever. But the Problem with worm and virus in Windows, hurts Microsoft alot. And since they don’t have so much users migrated to their new Windows Desktop OS (Win XP), they need alot of time and money to keep older version of Windows on the same fix-/patch-level as Windows XP.
Another problem is the fact that you can “live” with a old version of Windows and with old versions of Microsoft Office. Or you could still use a old version of Windows and add OSS software to it (Mozilla, FireFox, OOo.org, etc) and still use this system for daily work. And since Microsoft is doing all their best to stop illigal copies of their Software, users start to use OSS software. This does not mean that they switch to Linux. They just install OOo.org, FireFox, etc… And what do you think is the next logical step for those users? They switch the OS.
And even if they would not switch the OS: Microsoft still looses income if the users start to use OSS.
Another big problem is the “homogenization” of the environments. Applicaitons runing on the web? You just need a browser! Or development frameworks like .NET wich get ported to other platforms are as well a big problem for Microsoft. etc. etc. etc.
In my opinion, Microsoft has the following prolems/benefits:
Their products: Good. Older (1 to 3 years) products are still “good enought” for daily work.
Their customer base: HUGE!
Problem with current customer base: They don’t want that often to update, upgrade to new products.
Proplem with growing of the customer base: Dificult! Microsoft can not grow that fast as they did in the past. Two digit percentage every year are not realistic any more.
Advantage for Microsoft: Beside MacOSX, their competitors (for the desktop market) are not very well organized.
Their reputation:
As company: They are $$$ hungry. They don’t like competition. etc.
For their products: Users are happy with the products (okay… okay… some are not, but the main part is)
Their pricing: phuuuu… every one knows that MS is earning a hell of money on them.
etc. etc. etc.
Final point is, that MS will still be here and that they will do their best to stay number one on the desktop. But they are facing big problems. Problems not produced by external forces! But problems produced mainly by internal things and size problems.
Anyway… I respect them and wish them the best. For me nothing changes. As long as I can use my Linux and I am able to use Lotus Notes in Wine… I am happy. I don’t need Windows and I sure don’t want to spend $$$ on it. It is a good product, but I don’t need it.
hi, i have windows xp on my m5310.
when i move .wma files from one location to another, i notice that windows media player can’t seem to find them. is this normal?
hi,
i currently run windows xp on my emachine m5310.
i’ve heard that there is near-universal agreement that windows 98se is far superior to windows ME in a variety of key areas that matter to consumers, such as bugginess and stability.
is windows 2000 superior to XP?
hi, i run windows xp on my m5310.
should i update it with Service Pact 2, RC1? security is not much of an issue for me, as i am a student. what i wonder is, are there non-security general bug fixes in SP2 that enhances windows XP stability and functionality? if so what are there or is there a url
i’ve heard that there is near-universal agreement that windows 98se is far superior to windows ME
Yes, ME was one of the worst OSs ever released.
is windows 2000 superior to XP?
Depends on the task really. But I’d recommend that you stick to XP, it’s not worth the reinstall unless you have specific issues with XP.
should i update it with Service Pact 2, RC1?
No, wait for the final release, but wait to install it until you’ve heard about other peoples experience.
If you haven’t upgraded to SP1 then I recommend you to do so.
hi,rain,
what made windows ME a worse release than windows 98se, since they had at least 2 years to improve on 98se code base?
since i use a modem, and i only log on for about an hour a day, i don’t think security is an issue for me.
what important bug fixes and stability improves does SP2 offer me?
thanks
dan
Ok, so I’m working on a project for a large Australian company and let’s just count the machines on my floor (that I can see)
In my “pen” there are 4-W2K desktops, and 2-XP laptops (XP is not SOE … unless you have a laptop!) (Total: W2k=4 XP=2)
To my right, we have 1 iBook, 1 Linux guy, and 2 more W2k desktops (Total: W2k=6, XP=2, OsX=1, Lnx=1)
To my left we have we have 4 W2k boxes, another XP laptop and another Linux box (Total: W2k=10, XP=3, OsX=1, Lnx=2)
And in the end pen 2 XP laptops (Total:W2k=12, XP=5, OsX=1, Lnx=2)
BUT .. the real killer is that against the wall we have 30(!) XP boxes running a data-migration (no it’s not a cluster, just 30 machines 1 screen and a couple of switch boxes) because they have run out of space in the server room (where there another 90 XP boxes). Plus another 10 boxes have just arrived and the monkey’s in the pen next door are about to set them up.
So … Total:W2k=12, XP=45, OsX=1, Lnx=2
I guess what I’m getting at here is that although there is no denying that M$ own the market – what are all of the 210m copies actually doing?
You’d think that if 4%+ of the panet’s population is using XP then someone would have done something about that annoying startup tune !
“There has always been people with no sense of moral. And I’m not saying that everything was better in the past, because some things are a lot better now. But when it comes to how people in sociaty treat each other today the world has become a lot more egocentric. You just need to go back 10 years in time to realise this..”
Human nature; how do you think youre ancestors survived in the jungle? By being nice and sharing their food? (Hint: the strong ones survived..)
As much as we would like to think of ourselves as better than them, in the end we ARE the same, and our primal instincts will make us hunger for power, control, money, sex…
Your nice ideals would only work in a well diciplined society, and being from sweden too you realize that dicipline is not “cool” anymore here, so yes socialism killed itself. And now we are heading towards the american type of system, some will embrace it, love it, and make a fortune. Others will struggle and complain. Its “Battle Royal”, and all one can do is to make the most of it.
… which is MS telling PC manufacturers how to build their machines to take full advantage of Paladium, or whatever it’s called now. does this not bother anyone else? sure, it has great potential in stopping, or at least lessening the damage of virii, trojans, hijacking, etc., but looking at MS’ history, they’ll probably use it to also lock out or severely limit any software that pisses them off. do you really want MS controlling your hardware too? before anyone laughs this off, they’ve already done this with the Xbox. they own it. they have the right to prosecute you if you modify it in any way. think about it.
Human nature; how do you think youre ancestors survived in the jungle? By being nice and sharing their food? (Hint: the strong ones survived..)
By working together as a group, creating tools and weapons as a group, hunting and cooking as a group, communicating as a group, sharing food and knowledge as a group.
Do you seriously think that whenever someone found food they killed the rest in the group so that he could have it for himself? They were all depending on each other, because one single human being is such a weak little creature that wouldn’t make it alone out in the woods.
The thing is that those people who only think about themselves actually don’t think much about themselves since they destroy their surroundings.
The key is: Other peoples well being is your well being. Your well being is other peoples well being. You can’t make it here alone, never ever. These people are cutting off the hands that feeds them.
My only hope is that China will take over most of our production and become wealthy, leaving the western countries as china once was. Perhaps people will start thinking about how and what they did wrong. Better late than never.
We have gotten this far by helping each other, there’s no reason to stop doing that just because 0.001% of the world will benefit from it.
If you are right, then I will move away from this society. I’ve allready started to look at the alternatives. I will give this society 5-10 years, if it doesn’t get any better I’ll just leave.
So thats 210 million copies of XP out there with RPC services and LSASS services and god knows what else thats remotely exploitable. If MS had brains and turned off uneeded crap by default we wouldnt have the massive worm problems we have been seeing lately. Oh well,too late now.
Let’s take Be. If M$ would not have put giant pine tree in Be inc wheel and if Be did have only 1% of M$ market:
I wish people would let go of the Be bull crap. It wasn’t MS that killed Be, it was BE that killed be.
Be was a mismanged company with an egomaniac at the helm. It wouldn’t have mattered if Be closed an OEM deal because there were no applications available for the OS.
Speaking of Be, what the hell does Be have to do with a blurb about MS selling copies of XP ???
Just a quick note… It is very possible that this figure is not actually *sales*. Microsoft do this a lot; they quote shipments to retailers/OEMs as sales.
Just because you give them 50 million copies, doesn’t mean that they can sell them all.
Actually yes those are sales. You don’t *give* copies to distributors, you sell copies to distributors.
>>>Let’s take Be. If M$ would not have put giant pine tree in Be inc wheel and if Be did have only 1% of M$ market:
Be’s major shareholder — Intel — was recently raided by the japanese government for anti-trust behaviours against OEM manufacturers. Exactly the same charge that Be sued Microsoft.
“Your math isn’t correct.
You think that the purpose of a business is to break even.
It’s not, the purpose of a business (well, most of them) is to make money.”
I suggest you take it, and read Adam Smith’s book too.
“they’ve already done this with the Xbox. they own it. they have the right to prosecute you if you modify it in any way. think about it.”
Uhh… This is a video game console. What about Sony or Nintendo who develop their systems? They too specify what goes into their systems since they are the ones that have control over the design, manufacture, and compnonent selection.
well, youre right to a certain extent, even chimpanzes scratch each others backs. But you are fooling yourself if you think our intelligece makes us stand above nature.
Communism fails because it doesnt take into account human nature, you cant really brainwash our instincts out of our brains.
And china is a very competetive country, elite schools and all that. Ever been in Shanghai? They are paper communists. Take a look at the huge diff in living standards between some parts of china and youll see that the old commie nests in the inland are far behind in every sense. Just like the northern parts of our country, they have no future unless they adapt.
And you sir, are a puppet.
I would like to know which companies do this, so I can steer clear of both their stock and their employment.
That’s whats wrong with the stock market in the first place. People invest in the company that will make them the most possible profit, and the companies do _anything_ to make most possible profit. It just doesn’t work in the long run. I lost my own company because of this, when the IT bubble bursted. (I guess I don’t have to explain to you what happend since you are so good at economics.)
Providing products and jobs IS CONTIBUTING something to the ‘community’.
Only if the products are needed. 90% of all products are more or less forced on to people by brainwashing them (advertisements). There’s a huge difference between finding a market and creating a market.
I say let the consumers decide, its called FREEDOM.
So much for freedom when there’s only one choice left.
Go take some economics, please before you make yourself more the fool.
I have studied economics for three years, and while the system makes sense in itself it doesn’t make sense in the real world. What you don’t get is that economics are constructed. It’s created and maintained by us. It’s not something that fell down from the sky.