Microsoft's money machine revealed

Microsoft's money machine revealed

Finally the unit responsible for Windows made a profit of $2264 million on costs of just $545 million, resulting in a percentage profit of a massive 415.4%. In other words, every $100 spent on developing and supporting Windows returns $415.

Let's put this in context. Dell's recent quarterly statement shows its margin at about 9%, which is a lower margin than even the least productive of Microsoft's profit-making groups. IBM's margin is similar to Dell's but HP's is about 6% in total, thanks mainly to printers, and Sun Microsystems is even lower.

Microsoft's near-monopoly in PC operating systems has basically given it a licence to print money.