Excerpt from an extensive Jean-Louis Gassée Surface snapshot
“For decades, software generated much higher margins than hardware. Microsoft was admired for its extremely high margins, while Apple was criticized for stubbornly sticking to hardware and its lower profitability — to say nothing of lower volumes as a marginal PC player. But now, as Dediu points out, Apple is the company with both the higher revenue and operating margin [emphasis mine]:
‘If we simply divide revenues by PCs sold we get about $55 Windows revenues per PC and $68 of Office revenues per PC sold [1]. The total income for Microsoft per PC sold is therefore about $123. If we divide operating income by PCs as well we get $35 per Windows license and $43 per Office license. That’s a total of $78 of operating profit per PC.
Now let’s think about a post-PC future exemplified by the iPad. Apple sells the iPad with a nearly 33% margin but at a higher average price than Microsoft’s software bundle. Apple gives away the software (and apps are very cheap) but it still gains $195 in operating profit per iPad sold.
Fine, you say, but Microsoft make up for it in volume. Well, that’s a problem. The tablet volumes are expanding very quickly and are on track to overtake traditional PCs while traditional PCs are likely to be disrupted and decline.
So Microsoft faces a dilemma. Their business model of expensive software on cheap hardware is not sustainable. The future is nearly free software integrated into moderately priced hardware.’”
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