Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Expects 1 Billion Windows Users by 2010
prostoalex writes "The head of Microsoft Windows client division claimed there will be 1 billion Windows users by 2010, while nowadays there are 600 million of them, Microsoft-Watch reports. 35% of Microsoft's enterprise customers are still running Windows 9x and they are ripe for upgrade. Currently Microsoft's desktop PC market share is at 96%, with the closest rival - MacOS from Apple Computer - being installed on 2.8% of the desktops."
As they say, predictions are difficult, especially about the future. What we have here is either bravado or, at best, a marketing goal. Lots of thunder and very little rain. What it's doing in ./ other than as a troll, I don't know.
Allthough I can't quote any scientific studies or reports I can FEEL something is changing. Everywhere around me people are throwing out Windows, replacing it with Mac OS X or Linux. Internet Explorer is slowly losing market share. A general awareness of alternative platforms is beginning to progress. There have been so much talk in the media about the insecurity of Windows and how other operatingsystems don't have these problems. I really really doubt there will be one billion Windows users by 2010.
The report does not say where these extra 400 million are coming from. I doubt China would embrace MS, with "Red Flag" their pretty puppy.
Short of the smaller emerging countries, which seem to embrace non-MS more often than not, India seems the only place likely being targeted.
Interestingly, the one fact they report - 35% of users in Win9x/NT - would be a perfect focal point for an all-out Linux/Mac ad blitz (whoever wants it the most). That would take over 200 million away from their current base.
All the article really says is that Microsoft expects all those myriads of people still running Win 95/98/ME/NT workstation to upgrade. Basically, they're counting in much the same way McDonald's counts, in this case, by number of licenses sold. This number is not a measure of active users.
Linux has an opportunity to beat Microsoft to the punch with Longhorn. Application learning curve? Given that few of your existing applications will work in Longhorn, why not learn Linux? Fully developed suite of utilities and applications, you say? Buy a distribution from SuSE, Redhat or Mandrake [insert your distro here]. With Longhorn, Microsoft is giving up the one advantage they really had, the Win32 APIs (a position elaborated very well by Joel Spolsky in his Joel On Software column--sorry I don't have the link handy).
The cold hard truth is that MSFT is still vastly overvalued. In the late 90's Microsoft looked like the company that will take over everything
No, in the late 90's, virtually everything in the tech sector was overvalued. In the 90's, there was vast any wide speculation about the future of MS as a single company. Remember that?
The stock was valued this high because of these huge perceived future earnings.
I disagree. The stock was valued high because it is a stunningly profitable company. And because despite its legal problems it continues to earn a tidy profit.
Now things have changed a lot and Microsoft is struggling everywhere outside their core-market (which is desktop software) and even their core-market is threatened.
Let's get real. Their core market isn't going anywhere. For the forseeable future - 5 to 10 years, Microsoft will still rule the desktop. Period. Prices may have to be cut a bit, but it's not going anywhere. It would take a generation - twenty years at least - to remove MS from the desktop just by sheer force of momentum.
Microsoft has 60 billion in the bank, but will they ever be able to earn enough to justify their market cap of 300 billion?
That's a real question. But the original question is not.
How does Microsoft expect to increase their market share 35% in the next 6 years[..]
Is a bogus question. They are not trying to from 60% market share to 95% market share. What MS is projecting is the global growth of the PC market, applied to their 95% shared. Over the next 6 years is it reasonable to add 400 million Windows PCs world wide?
Yes, absolutely.