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> Microsoft has shipped more software than any other company on the planet.

Do you know this as a fact or are you just speculating? (I don't care if it was speculation, I would just like to know if this is true and how it was measured if you know.) I would imagine it would have to be either Microsoft or IBM who have shipped the most software in history but I'm not sure the best way to measure the "most" software (does one count titles, licenses, revenue, etc.)?




Microsofts cumulative revenues since their start is roughly 390 billion dollars, the vast majority of that was software.

http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.h... (crappy, but convenient page and the numbers seem to be ok, it only goes to 2005, so I've added another 150 billion)

IBM has a much larger total revenue but the vast majority of that was hardware leases during the mainframe years (and it probably still is), as well as consultancy.

Software was a huge component compared to other manufacturers but I doubt it comes close to what microsoft has made.

I can't find a good breakdown of IBM revenues that splits it out by category though, if someone else has access to that it would be nice to know.


Also IBM mostly does enterprise software. Microsoft has been successful in many different types of products: video games, operating systems, software development (IDEs, programming languages, etc), search engines, office applications (word, excel, etc), just to name a few. I think regardless of how much IBM has made from software compared to Microsoft, it is safe to say Microsoft has been much more successful at delivering products in a whole gamut of industries.




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