Today at the Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft took the verbal gloves off: During his keynote, CEO Steve Ballmer mocked Apple’s Mac sales numbers.
He compared the number of PCs sold in the last twelve months, some 350 million units, to what he called roughly 20 million units sold by an unnamed, but much hinted at competitor.
As it was quite obvious that Ballmer was referring to Apple in his comparison, we looked into the 20 million unit sales claim. After adding up official Mac sales stats from Apple for the last four quarters, total sales were only 15.25 million. If Ballmer was rounding up, or was simply including Linux computer sales as well, we are not sure.
Ballmer said that 20 million non-Windows PC sales was “too much.”
The opening keynote then went on to discuss a variety of other Microsoft products. We have condensed the remarks into three sections.
Xbox and Bing
Now that the Xbox 360 is the bestselling console, Microsoft can’t stop talking about it. Today Microsoft went over the coming voice command features that the Xbox will support, via Kinect, to make it a mostly hands-free experience.
Also demoed was the coming Bing integration into the Xbox ecosystem, bringing new name recognition to the Bing brand, and likely simplifying the use of the console as an entertainment system. Good news: Ballmer did say ‘Zune’ in his talk, so the brand lives another day.
Also included in the remarks were a few paragraphs on Bing, discussing its management of Yahoo’s search queries, and stating that its market share continues to rise. That is not new, of course, but it is important to keep in mind.
Windows and Office
A vast chunk of the keynote was spent discussing Windows 7 and 8, the latter being the obvious crowd favorite. According to Microsoft numbers, some 400 million Windows 7 licences have been sold:
But the company was optimistic that it can continue to raise that number, as some 2/3rds of business computers are still running XP, an operating system that is nearing its ‘death,’ the day in which Microsoft will no longer support or update it. On a more positive note, according to internal Microsoft research, some 90% of enterprise customers are “committed” to moving to Windows 7.
Windows 8 was given another run through on stage, but nothing new was announced. What was interesting was Microsoft’s confirmation that at the coming BUILD conference more would be unveiled.
Office was also discussed, with Microsoft releasing a sales figure for Office 2010: 100 million licences have been sold. He also said that of all the servers shipped in the last year, 75% shipped with Windows.
Windows Phone 7
Windows 7 was perhaps the funniest segment of the keynote. On the topic of the company’s transition from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone 7, Ballmer shouted “we’ve gone from very small to very small, but it’s been a hell of a year.”
Microsoft held specific sales numbers out of reach once again, but did say that it had sold “millions of phones,” and claimed that among current users, 90% would recommend the phone line to a friend.
The final takeaway from today’s keynote is that Microsoft is pushing integration across every aspect of its product line. This is its vision, in a nutshell:

















Reminds me of
http://mattrichman.tumblr.com/post/6844151919/a-consequence-of-losing-the-pc-wars
“Apple makes more money from the sale of one Mac than HP does from selling seven PCs.”
I think to quantify sales numbers you’d also need to look at total worldwide pc profit share…
Similar to handset sales – Nokia makes lots more handsets, but doesn’t mean it’s taking the lion’s share of the profits.
@tomtubbs so apple making more per computer is good gor the consumer?
Yeah, that results in higher quality products.
You should make sure and remind telecommunications companies….
The point being that profit and quality do not go together as well as you would like to believe.
Ballmer should know better than to laugh at Apple. He laughed at iPhone he laughed at iPad. Lightning can strike three times.
http://www.ilove-shopping.org
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Can’t they make high quality product while having the same profit margins as the rest of the manufacturers? That’s why I don’t buy Mac, the prices are artificially high.
How does the revenue per user for Windows compare with revenue per user for Macs ? If Macs bring in $1500 and Windows brings in $75 per user, there is a 20x difference which evens out the 400 million users to 20 million users difference.
Ballmer’s point is solid, as of right now Windows still dominates the computer platform world. The threat from Apple was never existential. Apple products cost too much to ever take out Microsoft. The real threat right now is Android. As strong as the Windows PC vs Apple PC numbers are the Android vs. Windows 7 Mobile are likely even more dramatic. And smaller and more mobile is the big growth area. Ballmer can mock Apple but the real threat has moved to Google, which is having an amazingly solid summer right now with Android and Google+
not true. the reason apple is so much more profitable is because they have the best supply chain and manufacturing process in the industry. They get to build out fast, cheaper, and more efficiently because they do not spread their product line amongst more than a few main products. This is no different than the Southwest airlines model that makes them more profitable. SW Air only flys Boeing 737 aircraft and they do all their maintenance in house. Most airlines fly MANY MANY airframes which raises the cost of MX and labor.
Macs are not artificially priced higher. you get what you pay for. Anyone who buys a good Sony or Toshiba windows laptop for 2k + (same price as mac) knows that.
@danny
who wants to make a lower profit margin? You must not own a business.
The reason apple is so much more profitable is because they have the best supply chain and manufacturing process in the industry. They get to build out faster, cheaper, and more efficiently because they do not spread their product line amongst more than a few main products. This is no different than the Southwest airlines model that makes them more profitable. SW Air only flys Boeing 737 aircraft and they do all their maintenance in house. Most airlines fly MANY MANY airframes which raises the cost of MX and labor.
Macs are not artificially priced higher. you get what you pay for. Anyone who buys a good Sony or Toshiba windows laptop for 2k + (same price as mac) knows that. Apple is more profitable because they do it better than the competition, not because they are gouging their customers.
Good.
Fast.
Cheap.
Pick any two :)
“More users with less revenue” is always better than “more revenue and less users” model.
“More users with less revenue” is always better than “more revenue and less users” model.
Seeing as Microsoft blackmail companies into having Windows preinstalled, I don’t really think they’re in a position to mock other companies for not doing as well.
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