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Microsoft's Most Valuable Asset

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Re: Microsoft's Most Valuable Asset

#51

Post by netcan »

hmexx wrote: post #47
cargo8 wrote: post #41

Great call out on a reasonable strategy for Microsoft to remain successful, albeit less relevant in the consumer market. (There is another comment alluding to taking the route of IBM, cementing their place in enterprise but sacrificing the consumer market a bit). AD is definitely a great asset that is probably not thought of as much as it should be given its usage, as you point out. I would say, though, that claiming…

Yeah. People seem to forget that MS has a larger share of the search market than Apple does of the PC market. And search has given the market leader (Google) a 200bn+ market cap! So not exactly throwing money down the drain.

The difference is that on PCs, Apple takes a far higher profit margin than other manufacturers.

On Search, Bing has a lower profit margin than Google.

Apple's model is good for making money as a smaller player. Bing's is not.

Re: Microsoft's Most Valuable Asset

#52

Post by josteink »

Not really a well written piece. In fact, it's pretty poorly written.

But yes, AD is king in most enterprises. Definitely one of Microsoft's most important assets.

And that can be said with way less text. Like I just did.

Re: Microsoft's Most Valuable Asset

#53

Post by rahoulb »

DanBlake wrote: post #22

"In fact, so many people I work with don’t use Windows as their host OS." Then the people you work with are a edge case minority. Windows absolutely and completely dominates the desktop computer landscape in both enterprise and home. Most estimates have it at 90-95% penetration worldwide vs mac/nix. For anyone who may say macs are now selling more than ever before and that MS is losing market share fast, remember tha…

Of course this is purely anecdotal, but I've seen a few Windows-only places become mixed Windows and Mac. Yes, it may only be 10% Mac today but that's from 0% two years ago. And the macs are seen as desirable, so I wouldn't be surprised if it increases, especially as the IT department processes for integrating them have been worked out.

Re: Microsoft's Most Valuable Asset

#54

Post by actsasbuffoon »

DanBlake wrote: post #22

"In fact, so many people I work with don’t use Windows as their host OS." Then the people you work with are a edge case minority. Windows absolutely and completely dominates the desktop computer landscape in both enterprise and home. Most estimates have it at 90-95% penetration worldwide vs mac/nix. For anyone who may say macs are now selling more than ever before and that MS is losing market share fast, remember tha…

Not quite. For every Mac sold ~16 Windows computers are sold. 2004 was Apple's worst year VS Windows and even then the ratio was 55:1. It is not now, nor has it ever been close to 90:1. The numbers are easy to find, and there's no excuse for pulling numbers out of thin air as you did above.

If you include tablets with computer sales (a line MS seems eager to blur) then Apple is the #1 computer manufacturer in the world at 14.6% of market share. HP is #2 with 14.1% of combined computer and tablet market share.

Re: Microsoft's Most Valuable Asset

#55

Post by DanBlake »

actsasbuffoon wrote: post #54
DanBlake wrote: post #22

"In fact, so many people I work with don’t use Windows as their host OS." Then the people you work with are a edge case minority. Windows absolutely and completely dominates the desktop computer landscape in both enterprise and home. Most estimates have it at 90-95% penetration worldwide vs mac/nix. For anyone who may say macs are now selling more than ever before and that MS is losing market share fast, remember tha…

Not quite. For every Mac sold ~16 Windows computers are sold. 2004 was Apple's worst year VS Windows and even then the ratio was 55:1. It is not now, nor has it ever been close to 90:1. The numbers are easy to find, and there's no excuse for pulling numbers out of thin air as you did above. If you include tablets with computer sales (a line MS seems eager to blur) then Apple is the #1 computer manufacturer in the wor…

Sorry, but this is completely inaccurate. Normally I would let it sit here as this post is over and nobody will see it, but those figures are not worldwide data. In some areas Mac certainly has higher penetration but it is absolutely not the case in worldwide sales. Again, for every 1 mac sold, there are 95 computers loaded with windows sold worldwide.

Latest peer-reviewed stats I could find:

In August 2011, Gartner estimated Apple's PC market share in US as 10.7% for Q2 2011. Apple's worldwide market share is not listed, because it is not in the list of top 5 computer manufacturers, and is inferred to be 5% or lower.

That suggests a lower than 1:90 ratio for worldwide, at 1:95

Im sure that there are many mac-fanboy stat posts showing more penetration but the fact is, they simply are -not- shipping anything near the levels you are talking about. Apple is a public company and you can simply see their numbers vs just one or two US shippers (HP/Dell) - Never mind the overseas producers.

Re: Microsoft's Most Valuable Asset

#56

Post by lukeh »

This is probably only of historical interest but: in 2001 I started building a Linux-based Active Directory replacement, XAD. I first demonstrated it in 2003 and I think we shipped around 2005. The underlying technology was OpenLDAP and Heimdal, but obviously with a lot of homegrown code (many RPCs, support for multimaster replication, etc).

XAD was sold to Novell in 2007 and was rebranded Domain Services for Windows. I haven't really followed its progress since; of course, Samba4 is also now an effective Active Directory replacement.

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