Sometimes, a name or brand becomes such a large part of your life that you start to forget it is there. Microsoft is one of those brands. From your living room, to your desk, and even in your pocket, Microsoft is there. Even in a market full of competitors in almost all facets of business, Microsoft still holds a prominent spot.
Here is what the numbers, provided by the Official Microsoft Blog, have to say:
Windows 7 has sold 150 Million licenses to date.
That is almost half the entire population of the United States -- In software licenses. 75% of businesses are strongly considering the upgrade, if they haven"t already done so yet.
The iPad is predicted to sell 7.1 million units this year. There is an estimated market for 58 million netbooks this year. That"s almost an 8:1 ratio of netbooks to iPad. In 2009, four percent of netbooks were not running Windows. Compare that to 2008, where less than 10% of netbooks were loaded with Windows.
14 million people use Netflix. That"s an impressive number. 16 million people subscribe to the 25 biggest newspapers in the USA. That"s pretty impressive too. However, 23 Million people use Xbox Live.
The scale at which Microsoft beta tests its software is large as well. Office 2010 had 9 million beta downloads. That"s almost the size of the Canadian province of Ontario.
Microsoft"s saturation of the market really becomes evident in webmail. Taking into consideration that Hotmail/Live has been around for a very long time, Microsoft has gotten a bit of a head start. Even so, with 360 million Windows Live email accounts and 299 Million ACTIVE Windows Live Messenger accounts, Gmail (173m) and Yahoo (284m) have a ways to go yet.
All of these numbers have translated into $14.5 billion net income for the company, with revenues of $54.8 billion. Even with solid competition from companies such as Apple, Google, Yahoo and others, these numbers show that Microsoft is still at the top of the software industry.