Forbes: Is Microsoft in trouble?

[scottie]

Paraphrasing some of the arguments above, with elaborations in [].

"holiday PC sales declined over 3% compared to 2011"
I think when you are citing a 3% drop YoY for one particular month as evidence of doom, you are clutching at straws. Even if the margin of error on those things is a mere 1.5% (and they would much much higher), then we can't even conclude that it IS definitely a drop.

"MS went from 95% [in the PC/laptop market] in 2005 to 20% [in the PC, laptop, phone and tablet markets] in 2012.
Apples =/= oranges.

"In 2005 there were 55 Windows devices sold for every Apple device; today explosive Apple sales has lowered that multiple to a mere 2!"
Only a fanboy would consider Apple's gain to be Microsoft's loss. It's a big market, there is room for two.

"And with all future market growth coming in tablets, which are expected to more than double unit volume sales by 2016, Microsoft is simply not in the game."
No growth does not equal decline

"a mere 2% compared to the number of people tweeting from iPads (Kindle was second, Android third.) Looking at more traditional units shipped information, UBS analysts reported Surface sales were 5% of iPads shipped."
The 2% number is idiotic. Compare how many people are currently playing Xbox360 to how many are currently playing WiiU. The 360 will win the comparison, due to years worth of install base, despite the fact that the WiiU is selling considerably better launches aligned. The 5% is less idiotic, but not overly worrying. Not coming first, against a popular, entrenched forerunner, is hardly being doomed. Surface will sell fine, but it was never expected to beat the ipad.

Lets look at two statements made in the article
1.) Microsoft makes more than 75% of its profits from Windows and Office.
2.) As more and more of the market shifts to competitive cloud infrastructure Apple, Amazon, Samsung and others will grow significantly. Microsoft, losing its user base

Cloud computing shows no signs of replacing Windows or Office any time soon. Google has an extremely high quality cloud based office suite, and has had it for years. Anyone know it's market share? Essentially 0. Cloud computing won't do anything to Windows sales.

The article admits that 75% of MS's revenue will most likely neither decrease nor increase in the near future, and then tries to claim MS is doomed?

The post is just cherry picked data, and comparisons, not showing that MS is doomed, but that other people are doing better.