What is the Biggest Threat to Microsoft? The Answer May Surprise You.

Do you know what Microsoft biggest business is?  Most would say without a second thought  “operating systems“, but if you said that, you’d be wrong.

If OSs are not the major revenue generating segment for Redmond, then what is?  Well, again it is not all the versions of Windows combined.  It is also not server OSs – that’s third, by the way.

That honor falls to Microsoft’s Office productivity suite. Microsoft Office generated roughly $23 billion in 2011 compared  to $17 billion flowing in from all versions of the Windows OS.

Microsoft’s products are responsible 95% of the productivity software market and the Office division is also projected to bring in $26 billion in 2016.

Thus, any threat to Microsoft’s dominance in productivity applications is serious and perhaps existential.   So let’s break down the actual threats to Microsoft in this space.

There are actually two very different, but very potent threats to Microsoft’s dominance, namely…  [continue reading this article]