Microsoft Statistics 2023: Insights And Trends Explored

Microsoft is an American multinational technology company, but its name has become synonymous with revolutionary. In this post, we will provide this with the help of over 100 key Microsoft statistics, facts, and insights that will help you understand its massive role in the glorious world of technology.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft nearly half a century ago with the ambitious goal of bringing a PC to every desk and in every home. They have largely achieved their mission, with the worldwide number of computer users crossing the 2 billion mark earlier this year.

Now, Microsoft is leading the technology industry in its transition to the cloud with rivals like IBM, Amazon, and Salesforce. At the same time, the company’s arch-nemesis, Apple, continues to lead the PC innovation. However, it’s safe to say that Microsoft’s impact on people’s lives is next to none. You’ll realize how.

Microsoft Statistics 2023: Overview of the Company!

Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology company founded fifty decades ago by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The company is now based out of Redmond, Washington, since 1986. It is one of the top tech companies in the world.

By April 2023, Microsoft will have a market cap of more than 2.25 trillion and a whopping 21% market share, proving the company’s dominance in the industry. Microsoft was launched to mainstream PC usage and has achieved that pretty well in the last few decades.

Microsoft is now enabling the digital transformation of the era of an intelligent cloud with a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Key Statistic	Information
Originally Launched as	Micro-Soft
Launch Date	April 4, 1975
Founders	Bill Gate and Paul Allen
Headquarters	Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, Washington, U.S.A
Available	Worldwide
Products	Computer hardware, Software development, Internet, Cloud computing, Social networking service, Video games, Consumer electronics.
Services	Microsoft 365, LinkedIn, Azure, Bing, OneDrive, Outlook.com, GitHub, Microsoft Store, Windows Update, Windows Copilot, Xbox Game Pass, Xbox network, Yammer.
Website	http://microsoft.com/

History of Microsoft: How it Started?

Microsoft Corporation was founded by two childhood friends, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who were trying to make a business using their skills in computer programming. Before launching it, the duo founded Traf-O-Data in 1972 which sold a basic computer to track and analyze automobile traffic data.

After that, Gates enrolled at Harvard University, and Allen pursued a degree in computer science at Washington State University. However, Gates dropped out in 1975 to work at Honeywell. The duo then got inspired to program a BASIC interpreter for Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS).

It occurred to them after the MITS was featured in the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics. Allen then worked on a simulator for the Altair, and Gates developed the interpreter. Their demonstration to MITS was successful, and it was launched as Altair BASIC. The real history started from here.

Microsoft Important Dates and Historic Facts:

On April 04, 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen established Microsoft as a microprocessors and software company, primarily to develop software for the Altair 8800.  Allen suggested the name “Micro-Soft,” which is short for micro-computer software. The name went on to cement its legacy in the coming years.

• April 4, 1975- Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsft in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
• In August 1997, Microsoft launched its first international office in Japan after an agreement with ASCII Magazine.
• In January 1979, Microsoft moved its headquarters to Bellevue, Washington.
• Microsoft entered the operating system (OS) business in 1980 with their release of Unix called Xenix.
• On June 25, 1981, Microsoft was incorporated.
• On August 12, 1981, IBM introduced its personal computer with Microsoft’s 16-bit operating system, MS-DOS 1.0
• Microsoft moved to the corporate campus in Redmond, Washington, on February 26, 1986.
• On March 13, 1986, Microsoft stock went public.
• May 22, 1990: Windows 3.0 was launched.
• August 24, 1995: Windows 95 was launched.
• On January 13, 2000, Steve Ballmer took charge as the president and CEO of Microsoft.
• February 17, 2000: Windows 2000 was launched.
• October 25, 2001: The revolutionary Windows XP was launched.
• Microsoft introduced Xbox on November 15, 2001.
• On October 21, 2003, Microsoft launched the MS Office System.
• January 30, 2007: Windows Vista and the 2007 MS Office were launched.
• November 10, 2010: Windows Phone 7 was launched.
• June 28, 2011: Microsoft launched Office 365.
• October 26, 2012: Microsoft launched Windows 8 and Microsoft Surface.
• June 29, 2015: Microsoft launched Windows 10.
• On October 26, 2015, Microsoft opened a flagship store in New York City.
• September 29, 2016: Microsoft formed its Technology + Research Group.
• May 23, 2017: Microsoft introduces Windows 10 China Government Edition.
• On January 16, 2020, Microsoft announced plans to become carbon-negative by 2030.
• June 24, 2023: Microsoft releases Windows 11.
• July 14, 2021: Microsoft introduces Windows 365.
• January 18, 2023: Microsoft and OpenAI extend the partnership.
• February 07, 2023: Microsoft overhauls Bing and Edge with AI.
• May 23, 2023: Microsoft launched Windows Copilot.

There are also many other key dates, including product and service launches. However, we haven’t added all of them here to keep the length of this post readable. We are only focusing on the key events here.

Key Facts About Bill Gates: The Founder

Bill Gates, real name William Henry Gates III, was born in Seattle on October 28, 1955. He is a billionaire business magnate, investor, and philanthropist best known for co-founding Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Here are some interesting facts about the revolutionary man:

• Bill Gates read all day long without breaks when he was a child. Due to this, his parents had to forbid him from bringing any to the dinner table.
• Bill Gates took a break from regular classes during his senior year in high school to spend time programming with Allen at a power plant in North Bonneville, Washington.
• Gates realized early in his life that his parents wanted him to pursue a career in law.
• He was small for his age and got bullied as a child.
• At 13, Gates enrolled in the private Lakeside prep school and wrote his first software program there.

• Bill Gates has been a part of the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires since 1987.
• From 1995 to 2017, Bill Gates held the title of the richest person in the world except from 2010 to 2013.
• As of August 2023, Bill Gates has an estimated net worth of US$ 126 billion.
• He is the fifth-richest person in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
• By 2022, Gates donated nearly $57 billion to the Gates Foundation.
• Bill Gates is one of the largest farmland owners in the United States.

He is one of the biggest philanthropists in the world right now. The journey of Bill Gates from a small child to one of the world’s most powerful and influential men is extremely inspiring.

Microsoft Statistics User, Usage & Facts:

Now that you know Microsoft’s history, establishment, and evolution, look at some interesting user statistics and facts. Almost 50% of the world uses services or products of Microsoft.

• As of August 2023, there are 1.5 billion Windows users worldwide. Out of those, around 1 billion are Windows 10 users.
• By March 2020, Windows was used by 76.13% of all desktop devices worldwide. This number has since reduced to 75.11% due to the expansion of MacOS and ChromeOS.

• There are over 232 million Edge users worldwide and 5.4 billion Internet users.
• Around 600 million people have used Microsoft Edge at least once.
• Microsoft Bing is the second most used global search engine. It has a market share of 3.14%.
• Among US console users, Bing has a market share of 38.46%.
• There are over 1 billion Bing visits every day.
• 31.7% of the total Bing traffic comes from the United States.

• Users spend around 2 minutes and 51 seconds on Bing.com on average.
• There are over 400 million Microsoft Outlook users in the world.
• Over 345 million people use Microsoft 365 (paid seats).
• Microsoft OneDrive has over 250 million users worldwide.
• More than 21,936 companies use Azure as of August 2023.
• 95% of Fortune 100 companies are using Microsoft Azure.
• 70% of Fortune 500 organizations have a license for Microsoft 365.
• Microsoft earned 87 in terms of Customer Loyalty Scores from males and females.
• In 2019, The Human Rights Campaign recognized Microsoft as one of the ‘Best Places to Work for LGBT Equality.’

Microsoft Operations Stats, Facts, & Insights:

Microsoft Corporation has been at the center of the technology revolution. At first, it helped put personal computers on people’s tables and led the internet revolution in the early 2000s. Bill Gates outlined the company’s commitment to support and enhance internet services in December 1995.

Microsoft is on the verge of leading the AI revolution by partnering with OpenAI and acquiring Nuance, AI-based voice recognition software.

Key usage and demographic statistics about Microsoft:

• Microsoft operates in 190 countries and comprises more than 221,000 passionate employees worldwide.
• Despite the recent trend of layoffs, Microsoft hired around 22% more people in 2022 compared to 2021.
• The workforce of the company grew from 181,000 employees to 221,000.
• Microsoft also laid off 10,000 employees recently.
• 122,000 employees of Microsoft are from the U.S., while 99,000 are international.
• The workforce of Microsoft is divided into operations, research and development, sales and marketing, and general administration units.

• Microsoft has around 600 offices worldwide, and 201 of them are in the U.S.
• Around one million companies use Microsoft Office 365.
• Microsoft 365 doesn’t grant licenses in Cuba, Iran, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Sudan, and Syria.
• Around 731,000 U.S. companies use Microsoft 365, followed by 187,000 businesses in the U.K. and 83,000 in Canada.
• By 2019, Microsoft Azure held 17.4% of the global Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market.
• This number grew to 23% by the end of 2022.
• Microsoft Teams has around 270 million daily active users.

• 80 million people use Microsoft Teams on their smartphones.
• 72.86% of MS Teams users are male, while only 27.14% are female.
• Most of the Teams’ user base (60%) belongs to the 35-54 age group. People aged 55+ make up 20% of the user base, while users between 18 and 24 make up only 4%.
• Microsoft Exchange is one of the best and most preferred email hosting options, with 300,000 online servers to support 7.3 billion mailboxes.

Microsoft Revenue & Growth Statistics:

Microsoft is one of the most successful companies in the world. Its global revenue has increased fairly consistently since its inception in 1975. Here are some staggering revenue, income, expenditure, and growth-related stats about Microsoft that you shouldn’t miss:

• Microsoft recorded a record-high annual revenue of US$ 198 billion in 2022.

• Microsoft has generated most of its revenue from the commercial licensing of its software and various operating systems.
• Office products and services constituted 23% of the total revenue, while Azure and other cloud services accounted for 22% of Microsoft’s revenue last year.
• ‘Intelligent Cloud’ is one of the largest segments of the company’s income.
• Microsoft also reported a net income of US$ 73 billion in fiscal year 2022.

• Windows brought in 12% of Microsoft’s total income.
• Microsoft surprisingly reported an annual revenue of $143.015 billion in the first year of the pandemic, and the figure grew to $168.088 in 2021, a 17.53% increase from 2020.
• 2022 has been the most successful year for Microsoft in terms of annual revenue despite the fourth quarter being the slowest growth since 2020.
• Microsoft registered an advanced year-over-year growth of 17.96% in 2022.
• In the first quarter of 2023, Microsoft reported a revenue of $52.12 billion.
• The initial Public Offering of Microsoft shares was for $21 on March 14, 1986.
• The all-time-high of Microsoft stock price was $358.73 on July 18, 2023.
• Analysts foresee that Microsoft’s stock could soar to $571.98 by July 2027.
• In 2022, Microsoft spent around $24.512 billion on Research and Development, an 18.32% increase from last year.

What Percentage of Marketshare Microsoft Owns?

Microsoft owns a massive chunk of the market share of all computer devices in the world and a lot of other services. Let’s find out how big of a hold Microsoft has on the global technology market in 2023:

• Microsoft holds a whopping 21% share in the global technology industry.
• Microsoft has a staggering market cap of US$ 2.31 trillion in 2023.

• In 2022, Microsoft’s market cap reached $1.91 trillion and soured up to $2.254 in April 2023.
• Windows holds a significant 28.79% of the worldwide Operating System market, only bettered by Android with 42%.
• Globally, Windows accounts for 75.1% of the desktop OS market.
• As of February 2023, Windows holds 57.37% of the desktop OS market in the United States, macOS holds 29.62% and Chrome OS holds 7.47%
• Microsoft holds around 50% of the office productivity software market.
• 90% of Chinese companies use Microsoft’s OS but only 1% pay for the usage.
• By 2020, Microsoft held 8.7% of the global SaaS Market in Cloud Computing.
• As of 2023, Microsoft has a 17% market share in the worldwide Cloud market with an impressive annual growth of 34%.
• Azure was the second largest cloud service provider, with a 24% market share.
• Microsoft also held an 8% market share in the global gaming market at the end of 2022.

• Xbox holds 96.8% of the global console operating system market share. It also has roughly 30% of the console gaming market.
• This number is set to increase with the announced acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
• Microsoft is also actively trying to acquire a major portion of the metaverse market with improvements on HoloLens, mixed-reality headsets for remote collaboration, and more.

Microsoft Software & Services Stats:

Despite having a wide range of flopped products such as Kin, Kinect, Windows Phone Zune, and others, Microsoft launched a long list of insanely successful products and services. Let’s take some important stats and facts about them:

• Windows is the second biggest operating system in the world, only behind Android.
• Bing is the second most used search engine with a market share of 8.88%, only bettered by Google with a market share of 83.84%.
• China is the leading user of Bing with 39.7% of all global searches, followed by the U.S. with 25%.
• Japan, France, and Germany follow these two.
• Bing has around 126 million unique users in the U.S., and 66 million out of them have set it as their primary search engine.
• Azure cloud platform has more than 200 cloud services and products.
• Microsoft spends around $1 billion every year to keep its cloud platform safe.
• Microsoft Teams is the most popular business communication platform.

• Between March 2020 and June 2020, the number of users of Microsoft Teams increased by 894%.
• The number of users of Teams insanely increased from 20 million in 2019 to 115 million in 2020.
• In 2022, Teams was used by 270 million users monthly.
• Microsoft has sold 58 million Xbox One consoles as of this writing.
• This is a major decline in sales compared to Xbox 360’s lifetime sales of 85.8 million units.
• Microsoft Xbox Live has 100 million monthly active users.
• Around 15.6 million users actively use the Xbox app every month.
• There are over 248.6 million Windows-based gaming PCs in the world.

Microsoft Acquisitions, Partnerships, & Rivals:

A major reason behind Microsoft’s mammoth success is its acquisitions and partnerships over the years, followed by the rivals who make the company keep pushing its limits. Let’s take a look at some interesting stats and insights about the acquisition, partnerships, and rivals of Microsoft:

• Microsoft announced plans to acquire Activision Blizzard in an all-cash deal worth around $70 billion in January 2022.
• In 2016, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn for $26.2 billion, which will now be their second biggest acquisition once the deal to takeover Blizzard completes.
• In 2021, Microsoft made another major acquisition of voice-based AI company, Nuance for nearly $20 billion.
• Microsoft also acquired Bethesda Softworks’ parent company, ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion in September 2020.

• Microsoft has also partnered with OpenAI to advance its AI capabilities. It has invested $10 billion in the company recently in addition to the $3 billion in 2019.
• Popular models like GitHub Copilot, DALL·E 2, and ChatGPT are already deployed in Azure.
• Salesforce, Amazon, and IBM are the primary rivals of Microsoft in the cloud market.
• In September 2014, Microsoft acquired Minecraft for $2.5 billion.
• In May 2011, Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion.
• On September 03, 2013, Microsoft bought Nokia’s device and services division for around $7.2 billion.
• In 2018, Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion.
• In 2007, Microsoft bought aQuantive for $6.3 billion and renamed it Microsoft Advertising. It was a devastating deal, and the company took a $6.2 billion writedown.
• On June 25, 2012, Microsoft bought the social media service Yammer for around $1.2 billion.
• In 1999, Microsoft acquired electronics manufacturer Visio for $1.375 billion.
• The company also bought Navision for $1.45 billion in 2002.

Conclusion:

Microsoft is a mega-success in the technology industry, and its growth is set to soar in the coming years. These statistics prove the level of impact it holds over the world and how it will shape the future of the tech world. The company focuses on AI, machine learning, and cloud computing.

They also breathe new life into the Bing search engine and Microsoft Edge browser. It may likely bring more Chrome and Google users very soon. Despite serious competition in every domain, Microsoft remains a major player and holds a large chunk of the market.

That’s all for this guide. Feel free to use the comment box if you have any doubts or queries about anything shared here. We’ll be glad to assist you.

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