Comment on Windows seemingly lost 400 million users in the past three years — official Microsoft statements show hints of a shrinking user base

lupusblackfur@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• FlexibleToast@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  1/3 of its Windows customers, not of all of its customers. I bet they still make plenty of money with Azure and Office 365.

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  • henfredemars@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Precisely. Windows is a side project for Microsoft now.

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    • dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Especially since the majority of computer users worldwide now no longer use a PC to do their computing. The average consumer now uses Windows only at work. Their personal device, whatever it is, runs Android or is some manner of iDevice, two platforms which have thoroughly eaten Microsoft’s lunch.

      It’s too bad for Microsoft that their mobile platform – Windows Mobile, er, I mean Windows 8 RT, er, actually it was Pocket PC, um, no wait, it was Windows CE, et. cetera – all bombed so spectacularly, and the most recent one mere moments before Google took over the world.

      I imagine Microsoft is no longer eyeing private users as a cash cow except purely as advertising targets.

      It’s only a matter of time before some brilliant dipshit over there manages to envision Windows as a subscription service aimed solely at businesses, and the days of Windows as a standalone OS will be over.

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      • henfredemars@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I could imagine a future where Microsoft is just a proprietary DE over a Linux system. I don’t think it’s coming anytime soon because of the development cost it would impose, but I don’t see why they would go to such efforts maintaining a system they could get for free if the desktop user base keeps shrinking. They’re just too greedy not to do that. Even the backwards compatibility with Windows software is becoming a solved problem.

        Aside from my above rant, the PC is definitely fast becoming an enthusiast/business platform.

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      • curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        It’s only a matter of time before some brilliant dipshit over there manages to envision Windows as a subscription service aimed solely at businesses

        I think at least one M365 plan includes a windows license now.

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      • ray1992xd@feddit.nl ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Yes, I don’t like Windows one bit anymore but back then, Windows Mobile was very solid! I loved my Lumia phones

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      • 3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Been saying exactly that for years but it hasn’t happened yet… It will when the last people (like my age) want to use Windows at home, but by then Macs will have gone as well because the pc as we know it will be finished. I can see pcs as such being gone in say 10 years and it will all be mobile devices as such, and I include laptops in that. Wifey has just lost the last installed program needed for her work from home. All web/connected apps to work from now, and when they go down the whole company stops work(ing). Lost 3 whole days this year so far as the whole company couldn’t function for various reasons

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    • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      i was a MS employee once. Windows hasn’t been their focus since Windows XP. Once they discovered the profit margins of Office 98… Windows was just a way to keep you using Office

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      • henfredemars@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        This makes sense. I have a friend from way back in HS who interned there while he was working on his degree who said that cloud services was the priority at the time, and Windows was more just a vehicle that they continued to maintain. That continues to be the approximate temperature of the product and is in line with my expectations.

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  • 3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    they do OK but services side including AI make way more…

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    • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      They pay for that AI from Open AI though. It’s not pure profit for them.

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• Godort@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  This will rely on having an executive team that can predict trends beyond the next quarter.

  Doubling down on advertising, telemetry in an overly bloated OS looks really good if you only care about the profits that brings for the next 3 months, rather than how much your userbase resents it. MS is fully capable of turning this around immediately by just making LTSC available to the public without needing to by a MAK through an enterprise channel, but that means throwing away some recurring revenue in favor of claiming a lost userbase

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• reddig33@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  It’s Microsoft current CEO. All they are interested in is subscription revenue. Xbox hardware is next to go.

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  • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    And that CEO completely turned the company around. Microsoft was circling the drain before they changed strategies.

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    • reddig33@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      You say turned around, I say ruined. He’s just remaking it into another IBM by selling services and killing anything innovative or creative.

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      • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        You’re allowed to be wrong. The fact is if they continued doing what they were doing they would be almost entirely irrelevant today.

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• Guidy@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  And adding advertising to various parts of the OS.

  Hey, Microsoft: de-shitify your OS if you want it to be more popular.

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• audaxdreik@pawb.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  You would hope, but this is the same thing we see across almost all industries these days. It’s almost like there’s a root cause for it, some sort of, Iunno, economic system we could blame …

  But especially cable companies, for example. Has a dwindling customer base caused them to rethink their business strategies? Or has it caused them to try and bleed that dwindling base dryer even faster?

  There’s no “learning” anymore, there’s riding the bus to the absolute pits of hell and just hoping you’re not the CEO to be the one that has to go down with it.

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• finitebanjo@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  For some reason modern business degree holders don’t even consider the possibility of increasing head coubts but instead maximising gains from remaining heads.

  Same with employees, they see things like dirty stores and long lines and they try to force employees to work as sanitation crews and implement time limits to make lines faster long before they ever hire somebody new.

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• 3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  they already have an their AI division earns way more than the Windows division. Matters little to them about Windows numbers dropping because in reality PCs as we know it are declining far more rapidly that anyone wants to say

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