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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."
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
Maybe they should get one of those signs like McDonalds used to have: "over 1 billion served!"
"Who hasn't slipped into the break room for a quick nibble on a love Newton before?" - Mr. Peterman.
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.
1 billion sold -- but poor quality, dangerous for your health, and leaves a bad taste in your mouth?
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
What's wrong with being a good server OS, with 1% desktop share?
1% is still a hell of a lot of people, more than enough to keep linux a viable platform worth supporting.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Is that 1 Billion LEGAL users?
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
2010... is that when they are releasing Longhorn?
-m
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# Modus Ponens
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Indeed it does. However, look at the growth it has had in the last six years, and project that into the next six years ...
If users how many of those users will also be Linux/Mac users?
Maybe someone familiar with set theory can comment here?
Omnis amans amens
Of course, they probably won't have to pay, since many of these countries are fairly lax about copyright laws. In order to really get Linux, the People's OS, out to them it would probably be a good idea to petition their governments to *follow Microsoft's lead* and crack down on software pirates. That drives up the cost of Windows and Linux wins!
Perhaps the interesting claim here is that there will be over a billion computers currently in use in the world (one computer for every seven or people). That is, assuming that 96% figure is correct.
Doesn't one billion PCs sound a little high considering that the vast majority of the world's population doesn't have access to a telephone?
Another MS prediction based on propaganda. Like the Gus Van Sant film, makes me wonder if they see the elephant.
Unplug the mainframe, and 500 little peer to peer servers emerge.
What this article neglects to indicate is, ironically, Fear, Unvertainty, and Doubt. Open source. MS only sees FUD when it is convenient!
tell me I am wrong. Afraid or uncertain that I right?! Ha!
The Custom Mary
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.
I think that by the time Windows gets 1 billion users, all the geeks here at Slashdot would of had hot steamy sex, including me.
flag burning
yeah! who cares? until companies stop buying windows for their pcs - this won't change. I'm an admin for Solaris and Linux -- and I have to use Windows on my laptop....(managed desktop) something to do with exchange something or other...
so we make do with exceed, scrt and putty. poor windows.
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
runs all your favourite RISC OS apps :'(
:
Thanks for reminding me of the Betamax of Desktop OS'es
One day, Bill Gates went to Herman Hauser, head of Acorn, in order to convert him to MSDOS.
Hauser answered
"-Thanks Bill, but we really cannot make that step backwards."
The BBC (RiscPC's ancestors) indeed had network (Econet which spawned ATM), mouse, color and sound while MSDOS almost had directories...
In 1994, my RiscPC had antialiasing, full-screen video and was able to execute Windows on a 486SXL second processor...
So, Microsoft is about to be used by 1/7 of the planet, I guess it's more because they know how to influence people who can take such decisions for their fellows.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
35% of Microsoft's enterprise customers are still running Windows 9x and they are ripe for upgrade.
We'll be sending Guido around to make them an offer they can't refuse.
KFG
Do you think they adjust for all the PC's sold with a licensed copy of Windows, then wiped and imaged with a corporate version of Windows that's separately licensed? I think every PC I've seen at work has a Windows product sticker on it, but it doesn't match the actual version installed.
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).
Over One Billion Served!
Somehow fitting, as Windows is to well written software what a Big Mac is to fine cuisine...
Never ask a geek why, just nod your head and slowly back away. -Rob Malda
I'm surprised that a comment like this comes from an MS spokesman. While there may well be that many Windows desktops, they're clearly missing the big picture if that's their target.
Even people who don't use a windows PC will be using windows. Even Linux users, if they use the web. Many sites, like Slashdot, are running through a windows server. And even if you're not interested in the net, Windows will be on a PDA, in your car, and on your set top box.
"The head of Microsoft Windows client division claimed there will be 1 billion Windows users by 2010
The 3rd reich lasted 1000 years too....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
While most of the article and comments here seem to focus on upgrades and the US (developed world) market, I don't think that is where most of this growth is expected to come from.
The article mentions PC growth the the developing world. The potential for growth there is huge, and I can see how they can come up with the 600k -> 1 billion number once that is factored in.
That being said, will windows catch on as much as they think it will in counties without a pre-established windows bias? That remains to be seen. Looks like China may already be able to be counted as a loss.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
They don't.
Microsoft stock isn't rising anymore for several years already, Microsoft needs some optimism for the stockholders so Gates, Ballmer, etc. can sell the rest of their stock - oops, sorry: to diversify their portfolio - before it becomes worthless.
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: Servers, embedded systems, cellphones - and destroy anything else: mainframes, all non-x86 architectures, etc.
The stock was valued this high because of these huge perceived future earnings.
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.
Microsoft has 60 billion in the bank, but will they ever be able to earn enough to justify their market cap of 300 billion?
I seriously doubt that.
Personally, over my multiple machines, I am probably counted as 4 users going back over my last 4 machines.
After all, machines may die, but licenses live on forever.
Seriously, this is not a troll of flaimbait. If Windows is really so bad as many people claim, why does it have so many users? I'm not looking for unhelpful onliners like "most users are idiots", etc. Some Linux and a lot of MacOS X users claim that their platform is superior to Windows in every way. Many Apple users will even argue that the Mac platform is not even more expensive (although they often confuse price with value). If so, why don't more people switch?
I'm a reasonably advanced computer user. Of the major platforms, I use Win2k/XP, Linux quite a lot, OS X somewhat less. In my opinion, they are pretty comparable for most things I want to do (and they each have their own set of quirks). But maybe I'm missing something obvious. So if anyone has some INSIGHTFUL comments on why people don't switch en masse to superior platforms, please let me know. And no flames please, let's try to keep the discussion polite.
That you need to report to the nearest Microsoft re-education center.
I dunno ... a lot can happen in six years. Microsoft claims a billion Windows users by 2010, but one might consider, on the other hand, Jeff Prothero's prediction that by 2010, Windows will be as dead as CP/M which is based on doublings-over-doublings of Linux market share.
Reality, as always, is probably somewhere in between.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
This could also count the number of embedded windows installations on portable devices. I you remember the worlds most installed OS is barely heard of.
I don't think the average user switches his OS. He (unwittingly) gets a new OS when he buys a new PC. And when he buys a new PC he goes to the shop, sees 4GHz Intel at $1000, 1GHz Mac at $1500, and buys the PC. There's really not a lot linux can do about that.
I seriously quiestion their reveny is going to be this high in the future even if they succeed in bringing home additional markets like China or India. Pirating is rampant and not many are aware of license costs. Recent discounts MS have been handing out seems to indicate that prople just dont want to pay that much money for MS Windows. Constant upgrading of the operating system isnt something the users want either. The day of printing money seems to be coming to an end.
Suppose Microsoft somehow makes the ultimate DRM system effectivly killing all the pirating in the world? Would the users gladly pay or would they just switch to something free and gratis instead?
Microsoft is in for a ride and i hope it makes them a teamplayer like IBM and others who once was big and without concious.
HTTP/1.1 400
FTA:
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Poole said Microsoft expects the demand to come from enterprises in developed countries, all sizes of companies in developing markets and from OEMs that tailor Windows for specific markets.
Many industry watchers have talked about the Windows desktop market as being a saturated one, with little potential for the huge unit and revenue growth of the past. But that's not the picture Microsoft's painting.
"PC replacements are at the top of what IT will be spending on this year," Poole predicted.
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I know at work it seems that everyone is getting a laptp in addition to their workstation, and sometimes we are given workstations to take home for "remote office" capability. If this is a widespread business trend, then yeah their perceived OS sales would "double" even though their user base doesn't really.
Aside from this possibility I think the article is just MS wishful thinking. Open Source isn't going away. On the contrary, it will only get better and better. I see MS having blinders on when it comes to OSS. They are in denial, and they are trying to distract everyone from realizing how truly innovative and progressive OSS is.
Once the Linux vendors of the world achieve hardware driver, gaming, and interoperability capability on the order of Windows (and they are VERY close to this) then there will truly be NO reason to buy Microsoft.
Longhorn is MS' next big thing. Linux has an opportunity between now and then to seize the tactical initiative. GO FOR IT!!
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
These numbers are from IDC, so you'll have to argue methodology with them. They are based on surveys and not only raw sales figures. (A few years ago, when IDC showed massive Linux growth, nobody was arguing with them -- in fact they were quoted by every Linux advocate.) The numbers might not be perfect, but thinking they are radically incorrect is probably a delusion.
y Reader$56
2004 Boo! - http://www.wininsider.com/news/?7124
2001 Yeh! - http://www.oreillynet.com/manila/tim/stories/stor
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
unless joe user sees a 3 ghz AMD for 500$, or a 1.5 ghz Via for 350$, and bothers to read the fine print on the back of the box that shows hundreds of installed apps with the linux variants as opposed to a dozen with the windows machines. But that won't happen unless all the stores carry them.
A lot of people, like is said, are still running an old box with 32 or 64 megs of ram running sub 1 ghz and like 98. And they paid (and they remember this part) well over a thousand dollars for those machines, and are still annoyed they are almost being forced to upgrade. They get confused over broken software versus broken hardware all thee time, it's "the same thing" to them, as in "computer works/doesn't work" binary observation. This is puzzling to people, and most annoying. When they see they can get a much cheaper machine that apparently doubles or triples what they have now, in terms of processor speed, installed ram, and number of easy applications, they *could* decide on the cheaper versions, I know I would think about it. They just have to be right on the shelf there side by side with the other machines to look at, all running with the same bandwith if they are net connected, for the real world testdrive.
That's the part that is hard, because you just don't see it, a lot of these places only show the higher end stuff on the shelf, and definetly not all three major operating systems. For instance, in my area (granted, semi rural, but only one hour from atlanta) there are half a dozen places that sell computers, none of them carry any macs or anything that doesn't have XP on them. Let me see, there's an office despot, walmart, a k-mart, and three whitebox shops. No macs, no linux that I see, not even any boxed software for the two alternative systems.
You get just a fraction outside the major cities, and the *apparent* choices drop dramatically. If all you see is a belchfire motors car dealership, most people in the area will be driving belchfires.
is provided by Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia etc. Half a billion people and maybe three original licenses in use.
I'm pretty sure they are simply adding up all the licences ever sold and not subtracting all the dead PCs lying in basements and dumps the world over.
Oh well, what the hell...
This article, written in 1999, predicted 10% of the desktop in 2000 (which never happened), 40% of the desktop in 2001 (which never happened), and market saturation in 2002. So reality is somewhere inbetween Microsoft being write, and this article being totally wrong?
The average user doesn't even know they run windows they have a computer and it's of the windows kind and they don't even know what an OS is.
/. user put Linux on 3 PCs in the next year in the home market that's a hell of a lot of PCs.
They don't upgrade or switch thier OS they buy new computers and thus get new OSes. OR the local geek switches one for them
We should all offer to put Fedora or something very friendly on everyone's computers we know, activly I might ad. We need some open source brochures or something. If every
I know countless people with Windows98 systems that are crumbling. However most of them are addicted to MS office like heroin or something. It's not windows they care for, it's opening their co-worker's and friend's documents at home that they care for. Yes they very obviously can do this with OOo and I honestly feel for the home user OOo is a BETTER product not just an alternative. But at the same time, it's different and people have already had enough trouble learning to run Office and their PC in general.
I argue Linux and OOo haven't gone far enough. We need a more dumbard version. When I click the button-a-ma-jig I don't want to see "system tools" I want to see "Change My Computer's Settings" Yes this is wordy and stupid but if Linux can get a REAL usability not usefulness edge on Windows then we'll be set. This includes OOo it's too complex for my grandma (So is Word) and it's too complex for a lot of people. So we should make an alternative that's much simpler, people don't give a crap about features. They want pretty and easy. A word processor only needs a few different settings and the ability to open lots of other documents and save them but it doesn't need to be able to actually do everything they do. We could have a starter mode for OOo that tells people this document uses page breaks or margins or whatever your current mode doesn't have a tool bar button for this please go to X menu or switch to advanced mode and please consider using the help tutorial section.
Honestly we geeks might not use the help button but lots of people do!
Slashdotters tend to say things like this. "I just FEEL something changing!" Well, that's because you visit Slashdot everyday, read posts day after day criticizing Microsoft, and form your perspectives based on the headlines posted on Slashdot. Yeah, if I did that, I can imagine I'd "feel" something changing too, because human perceptions are easy to shape.
You say everywhere around you people are throwing out Windows, which is either not true or means you have very techie friends. You claim Internet Explorer is losing market share without citing a single figure or study to prove that (Google Zeitgeist shows otherwise). You vaguely claim a "general awareness of alternative platforms" that is "beginning to progress," which is silly since I doubt you've scientifically polled the general public on this and are yet again just going by what you perceive your friends doing. There has been a lot of Windows insecurity talk, but it's mostly been on tech sites like Slashdot. The general public is busy with other things. Besides, tech studies have shown that Windows is no more insecure than OS X or major Linux distributions, according to that study Slashdot itself posted.
I would not be surprised one bit if there were one billion Windows users by 2010.
1) Longhorn will be the most expensive version of Windows yet developed (No shit Sherlock) BUT it will be the cheapest in real terms.
2) Linux will start to win around the time M$ start to push people towards Longhorn. Linux will have another 2 years of polish and development. Businesses will start to tale a long hard look at the choice of paying the Microsoft tax & taking it up the ass from Bill or shifting to Linux paying the short term pain (which will be a lot closer in cost for businesses when it comes to deploying Longhorn) with the long term gain.
We won't get everybody but as the O/S upgrade cycle swings around we will pick up a significant proportion of business. Once that business starts wanting features & sponsoring their development then it's bye bye monopoly.
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
They expect a lot of this growth to be due to world-wide PC sales expansion, which is where organized piracy and government Linux users will hit them the hardest, so the numbers may be more difficult to achieve than they think.
That's market share, not installed base. Apple only accounts for 2.8% of the desktops sold annually, but that is not directly comparable to their installed base. If the average Apple user kept his computer for twice as long as the average PC user, Apple's installed base would be 5.6% of all the desktops currently in use. It's a commonly held assumption that Mac users hold onto their computers longer, though I've never seen any statistics to back this up. It's makes little difference, I know, but it's so common for people to make this mistake that I had to say something.
I understand that there have been some recent belt-tightenings at Microsoft, as astonishing as it may sound. Apparently they got rid of the free soda, et cetera.
Also interesting about their attempted attack on Unix from Longhorn-- the much ballyhooed Unix support on the Longhorn core.
I think they're headed for hard times. They must work with OSS, and yet the more they do so the more they're going to be competing in an uneven playing field. Free software that works is far preferable to massively marketed, grossly expensive software that's full of bugs.
Only thing that Windows has now that Linux doesn't (don't split hairs with me, I mean mostly) is game support. And even that advantage is shrinking visibly. Currently I boot into a stripped XP for gaming, and that's it-- half the time in the XP installation, I'm running Cygwin to catch X apps from my other box for such things as browsing and sundries, thereby endrunning the execrable memory management in Windows.
If they don't accept OSS, their island is going to slowly erode under their feet. If they do accept OSS, they're screwed once again, because if they receive the Mark of the Penguin, their users will get used to free open source software and they'll start wondering why they should pay $178 for a similar but shittier, more bloated word processor. And then they'll start thinking about the OS that's full of security holes every week and vulnerable to all kinds of malware...
I just don't see how any kind of UNIX integration is good for the Windows business model.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.