Microsoft milks its longtime cash cows
Yahoo | at | by Mike
The personal computer industry might be mature, but Microsoft sees a lot of growth left in the PC market. PC sales have stalled. Worldwide, PC unit shipments rose just 1.4% in 2002 over the prior year, says research firm International Data Corp. In 2001 they fell 4.1% from 2000, the first-ever decline. Yet Microsoft has managed to boost its overall revenue an average of 13% a quarter year over year for the last eight quarters. This from a company that gets the bulk of its revenue from PCs.
It has more than 90% market share in PC operating systems and productivity software. And it gets most of its profit from those two cash cows - Windows and Office. Microsoft has been able to ride out the downturn thanks largely to a surge of revenue related to changes in how it licenses software to corporations, says Kurt Schlegel, an analyst with the Meta Group.