[9JollyOtter]

The fact is that Windows isn't the cash cow it used to be for Microsoft. Windows makes up less than 10% of Microsoft's revenue now. Server and Cloud and Office 365 make up the bulk of their income now.

As time goes on Windows is going to be smaller piece of this pie and I suspect Microsoft will move it over to a subscription service or you will just have like 1000 ads shoved in your face. I made the move over to Linux last year and Windows will have to live in a VM.

[materialpoint]

It's still the foundational underpinning of everything Microsoft does. It's just that the other revenues dwarf it. What still shocks me is that the current developers and management on the Windows teams are so extremely bad at everything they do. It's not like they could not serve ads and shove CoPilot in your face, without making the UI so so sloppy and slow. It's not like they couldn't make Explorer use less memory and start faster, even with preloading, which was introduced in Vista, opening Explorer remains painfully slow.

[nubinetwork]

> It's still the foundational underpinning of everything Microsoft does

And sadly, the backbone of the majority of quality, paid software... if windows starts losing market share to Linux, things will start becoming interesting when the adobe's of the world start eying the Linux desktop as a platform where everyone already has applications that do what they were selling.

[9JollyOtter]

> It's still the foundational underpinning of everything Microsoft does. It's just that the other revenues dwarf it.

If a corporate customer is running their stuff in the cloud they don't care if people are using Chromebooks/MacBooks/Linux to develop the software with. They just care that you are using Azure. Ultimately they want you to do everything through a web browser (just like google), even some dev environments are going that way.

Outside of corporations when interacting with non-tech people, none of them use a laptop. It is phone or tablet. A laptop running Windows is a work machine. I wonder what the stats are for home usage of Windows vs other things and honestly I don't believe a lot people are using a laptop/desktop running Windows.

> It's not like they could not serve ads and shove CoPilot in your face, without making the UI so so sloppy and slow.

I have a stripped down Windows 11 on my second disk (I will be removing it at some point). The OS is reasonably fast. I've removed most of the telemetry and other rubbish like the web search on desktop. So I can only assume it is that. I don't really care though anymore. I am running Debian on pretty much everything except for the work machine which I don't own.

[leptons]

>Windows makes up less than 10% of Microsoft's revenue now. Server and Cloud and Office 365 make up the bulk of their income now.

That isn't how you compare things. Server is separate from "Cloud" which is separate from Office 365 which is separate from Windows.

And Windows still makes them ~$28 billion a year, Azure makes then 3x that, but $28 billion is nothing to take for granted. It wouldn't matter if Azure made $150 billion/year, it doesn't make $28 billion look like pocket change.

[9JollyOtter]

> That isn't how you compare things.

I compared once segment of the business to others. Several other websites had various estimates on what percentage of the business Windows took up. Most of them said 6-10%, so I took 10%. Other websites group server and cloud, A rough guesstimate for a comment on a discussion thread is good enough. I was't aware I would need to go through the 10Q filings to satisfy you.

The point being communicated (even with your ridiculous nitpicks about the stats) is that Windows isn't a cash cow it once was. Microsoft Strategy is not Windows focused like it was under Ballmer.

[shevy-java]

I agree with you to some extent, but if Microsoft loses Windows here permanently then its desktop-centric control will also come to an end. So it would lose tons of opportunities here. I don't see Microsoft wanting to go that route really. It would basically commit suicide.

[t_mahmood]

They don't have to worry about PC segments, if there are no personal computes.

Ram price has sky rocketed, and probably out of hand of most of the people Same with GPU, HDD price is increasing, so is SSD.

How many people can build a new PC next year? And Amazon CEO just said it out loud about cloud computers.

Even though they'll take my PC out of my cold dead hands. But as it seems they want to get rid of Desktops.

[9JollyOtter]

They don't need it if everything is in the cloud running oh their servers. They won't care if you are running Windows, Linux, Chrome, A tablet with a keyboard and mouse hooked up.

The vast majority of people that don't work in IT don't ever use a laptop or a desktop computer unless it is for work. They are using a phone and/or tablet.

[nvader]

It's already become a veritable Times Square of advertising. We have a windows PC in the office to play DDR, and the "Live Home Screen" or whatever used to be the Desktop looks like MSN! Live or the Yahoo Homepage.

[pier25]

I just use Windows to launch Steam and rooting for Steam OS.