IT Brief New Zealand - Technology news for CIOs & IT decision-makers
Story image
Why Microsoft's numbers don't speak for themselves...
Tue, 13th Aug 2013
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Over 554,000 pizza slices are consumed each year by Microsoft staff on campus, revealed through a new "Microsoft by the Numbers" site.

Designed to collate the stats that matter in Redmond, the software giant conveniently bypassed that rather large looking elephant in the room however.

Blabbering on about Windows licences, Office sales and Xbox users, the company ignored the fact they took a mega US$900m hit on Surface tablet sales, announced less than a month ago.

While Microsoft is not alone in publicly stating how well they are doing, a failure to recognise the poor sales of the product suggests Steve Ballmer and co are quite happy to brush the Surface under the carpet.

Following two embarrassing price reductions in the past month, slashing the Surface RT by 30% and the Surface Pro by $100, the new website does highlight the growing depth of the company's business however.

Over 100 million Windows 8 licences have been sold to date according to the live-tiled site, with over 170,000 apps and games now present in the Windows Store, along with 48 million Xbox Live members across 41 countries.

For anybody struggling to sleep at night, wondering how many Outlook.com users are currently in the world, fear not, the answer is 400 million.

And did you know we spend up to two billion minutes per day using Skype? Collectively that is.

Over one billion people use Office across the world, equating to one out of every seven on the planet. But along with heaps of pizzas, the company seems equally as proud of the 2,600,000 gallons of free beverages they give away each year on campus.

Interesting as the site is, Microsoft are experts at highlighting some of the important (and not-so-important) facts about their business and company.

On the face of it however, Ballmer and his team don't appear to view as the Surface as anything - with such silence on the issue speaking a thousand words.

Are you surprised Microsoft ignored such poor Surface sales? Tell us your thoughts below