How iOS & Android Are Murdering Microsoft

(11:55 am PDT, Dec 4th 2012)

How iOS & Android Are Murdering Microsoft

Want to see an amazing chart? It’s right above this post, and it shows the rise and fall of computer platforms (including mobile) as a percentage of overall marketshare from 1975 to 2012.

What does it tell us about the state of the computer industry? Even with iOS’s success, Apple is proportionally selling about the same percentage of computers as it has since the early 1980s. Windows as a platform, though, has fallen from a ninety-six percent share of the overall computer market between 1998 and 2005 to a mere thirty-five percent in 2012.

Why? Apple and especially Android are killing WinTel.

The chart comes from Mary Meeker, a partner at leiner Perkins Caulfiend and Byers, from her “2012 Internet Trends Year-End Update” report. And woof, do things not look good for Windows.

It’s pretty obvious what’s happening here. Back in the halcyon days of Microsoft and Intel’s partnership, and before the rise of mobile and ARM, pretty much everything ran Windows, especially after Microsoft released Windows 95.

Over the last five years, though, the situation has changed. The rise of mobile ARM-based devices running iOS or Android have simply collapsed Windows’s marketshare, with no end in sight.

No wonder Microsoft’s pushing ARM-based versions of Windows out the door. No wonder they’re redesigning Windows from the ground up to be touchscreen friendly. No wonder they’re panicking that no one’s buying Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8. This chart says it all: Windows is dying, and because Windows is Microsoft’s lifeblood, that means Microsoft is dying.

Here’s the full slideshow:

2012 KPCB Internet Trends Year-End Update from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

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Comment »

  • R Holtslander

    That chart is such low definition it’s very difficult to read.

    • WTF2013LOL

      Any they merged too many unrelated things together

  • popeyoni

    Apples and Oranges. The iOS and Android devices are mostly incremental, not replacements for PCs.

    • site7000

      Not so. You need to review the rest of the slides and other studies. Pay
      special attention to how people consume the internet nowadays. PCs are
      now in the no-growth “heavy iron” corner of the business. Microsoft
      wants to get back in the game, but they are by far the worst run company
      in tech. They squandered every possible opportunity. And those other PC heavyweights: Dell, Acer and HP? How long will they be around? That fact is the Apples beat the Oranges and they did it the old-fashioned way: focus on the consumer’s needs and leapfrog the “microcomputer” on the way down the complexity curve.

      • WTF2013LOL

        You are a moron!

        • http://twitter.com/piyushr21 Piyush

          Lolssssss , I am speechless last sentence made me again fan of Microsoft ;)

  • http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.barrie.9 Jonathan Barrie

    Maybe if I could actually read the chart……

  • OwerrC

    really? Microsoft is dying? i think you got a little ahead of yourself there…

    • mahadragon

      MSFT is about half the size they were in year 2000 when they were the most valuable company in the world. If you going by that stat, and their dwindling market share of Windows OS, yes they are dying.

  • bdkennedy11

    This is where Apple’s secrecy strategy kicks in. Microsoft doesn’t have the ability to innovate anything, they have to copy everyone else. The iPhone caught them completely off guard. Look at the YouTube videos of people turning on a Windows 8 computer and sitting there not knowing what to do next. Last night my mom fiddled with my iPhone and new immediately what to do. Microsoft doesn’t get it and never will.

    • WTF2013LOL

      Apple is currently on the falling-side of the fanboy hill

      • Renton7

        huh? Did you run out of anything to say?

  • aardman

    MS should switch from an All-Windows strategy to an All-Office strategy. They should have done it years ago when iOS came out. They would have been the de facto standard mobile office suite by now.

    Better yet, they wouldn’t be in the toilet now if they accepted Judge Penfield Jackson’s remedy of breaking up the OS and app divisions of Microsoft. [They would have been forced to learn to survive in two highly competitive markets.] Instead Bill Gates made a deal with the Bushies and supported his 2000 bid big time in exchange for a slap on the wrist. They even launched a corporate PAC to support Bush. That Bush presidency sure was great for the country huh, Bill? Karma is a beautiful thing.

    • mahadragon

      aardman isn’t making much sense today. MSFT didn’t cut a deal with the feds until Gates was forced out of the picture. The feds would have to go inside MSFT headquarters and pry Gate’s dead hands from his keyboard before he would admit to any wrong doing. And yes, MSFT was very smart to start giving lobbyists more money to keep the feds off their back.

      An All Office strategy? As in, drop everything and just make MS Office for all platforms? Yeeesh! That wouldn’t make any sense at all. iOS users would like Office on their devices and already have Smart Office available, but those apps are used mostly by professionals and students. Those apps are more suitable for desktops and laptops, platforms which are ideally suited for content creation.

      Mobile devices are hardly ideal for content creation. No student is going to hash out a 10 page paper on their iPhone or iPad. They gonna use a laptop or a desktop PC because they’ll need the full power of Word.

    • http://twitter.com/ReedCole1 ReedCole

      like Shirley answered I am surprised that some people able to earn $9138 in 1 month on the network.

    • http://twitter.com/ReedCole1 ReedCole

      …..goo.gl/FCqlA (Click on Home)

  • http://twitter.com/TheSchnide TheSchnide

    I do like the sound of “Murdering” preceding “Microsoft” It rolls off the tongue oh so nicely.

  • AM3RIG

    Article is very true.. no bull!

  • Thom

    No, it’s from Horace Dediu at Asymco. Look at the fine print at the bottom of the chart. The slides how merely lifted it from them, and credited them. But now you’re misattrbuting it. Please read the fine print and completely trace the sources in the future.

  • WTF2013LOL

    The moron that made the article doesn’t understand the moron that made the graph. They merged lots of unrelated things together to push their agenda: merging computers and cellphones, merging every O/S from one company (DOS + Win 9x + Win NT families) and (Apple II, Mac, iOS), not including any alternate vendor cellphone O/S, …

    To correctly compare things, you MUST have seperate graphs for each type of device.

    Windows + Office + Large-Monitors is NOT leaving the work-world any time soon, so grow the f**k up and quit showing data incorrectly!

  • http://twitter.com/piyushr21 Piyush

    Flashing and rooting and putting custom rom on your device is impossible without PC , so stop saying bullshit and yes windows will be for long time unless . There is so much possibilities on Pc than on any smartphone.

About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Android, as well as our sister site, Cult of Mac. He has written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts with his charming inamorata and two tiny budgerigars punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous perverts. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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