Windows drops to No. 3 cash-cow status in Microsoft' latest quarter

Re:Windows drops to No. 3 cash-cow status in Microsoft' late... by jackfoxy on Thursday January 19, 2012 @06:10PM (#3487367)

Sure would like to know where Visual Studio falls in this. I would think giving away all versions of VS would only benefit Windows and Server sales by encouraging more developers.

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Re:Windows drops to No. 3 cash-cow status in Microsoft' late... by dangrossman on Thursday January 19, 2012 @06:16PM (#3487400)

Visual Studio is part of that Server and Tools division's $4.8 billion in revenue.

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Re:Windows drops to No. 3 cash-cow status in Microsoft' late... by jackfoxy on Thursday January 19, 2012 @06:47PM (#3487519)

I suspected as much, but how much of that $4.8?

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Re:Windows drops to No. 3 cash-cow status in Microsoft' late... by dangrossman on Thursday January 19, 2012 @06:58PM (#3487567)

I don't think they ever directly publish that, but they did publish in 2010, producers of Visual Studio extensions brought in over $400 million in revenue. Considering the people buying those extensions have a full version of Visual Studio, and the cost of VS and MSDN subscriptions, I would not be surprised if those two things account for most of that $5 billion.

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Re:Windows drops to No. 3 cash-cow status in Microsoft' late... by kevin_morrill on Thursday January 19, 2012 @11:46PM (#3488368)

Definitely not true. I am a former employee who worked on Visual Studio.

Visual Studio is close to a $1 billion business. The lion's share of the Server and Tools Division is licenses for Windows Server and SQL Server.

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Re:Windows drops to No. 3 cash-cow status in Microsoft' late... by famousactress on Thursday January 19, 2012 @07:12PM (#3487619)

Wow. In that case, it seems like it ought to be tempting to double the cost of Visual Studio and give non-business copies of Windows away.

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Re:Windows drops to No. 3 cash-cow status in Microsoft' late... by angelbob on Thursday January 19, 2012 @10:53PM (#3488235)

You'd think. But that would reduce the number of Windows developers, so doing that would be eating the seed corn.

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Re:Windows drops to No. 3 cash-cow status in Microsoft' late... by trin_ on Friday January 20, 2012 @04:01AM (#3488853)

considering windows server and mssql server are also in that division i highly doubt that!

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Re:Windows drops to No. 3 cash-cow status in Microsoft' late... by DaveMebs on Friday January 20, 2012 @12:43AM (#3488513)

VS Express is a free, fully featured IDE. What Pro/Ultimate features would really attract a new set of Windows developers? By the time you need Ultimate features, you can probably afford Ultimate.

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Re:Windows drops to No. 3 cash-cow status in Microsoft' late... by mgkimsal on Friday January 20, 2012 @08:51AM (#3489429)

It's not 'fully featured' if there's more features it doesn't have which another version does.

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