I'd like to know how many users there are (based on license sales) of
Microsoft Office 2000 and Office XP.  I'd like to know this user
number on a worldwide basis and also broken down by geography.

---

Request for Question Clarification by muhammad-ga on 25 Apr 2003 15:44 PDT

I didn't come across a single web page (including Microsoft website)
that lists geographical distribution of licenced Office 2000/XP sale.
There are website that have figures on sale of Office 2000 & XP. This
includes retail sales, yearly sales & upgrade sale figures.

I am searching more about geo-breakup, but I find the chances less.
Let me know if the figures without the country-wise break up would
ualify as an answer. In the meanwhile, I am trying my search skills
and luck with finding all I can.

---

Clarification of Question by peterch-ga on 25 Apr 2003 16:35 PDT

The sales of Office 2000 and XP includes retail sales, yearly sales
and upgrade sales is okay and will answer my question.

Hello peterch-ga! 

The primary source of Information came form the Microsoft Website
(albeit a long search). The section of Microsoft Website that provides
indepth reports about annual reports, earnings releases, Stock Info
info/analysis etc is at http://www.microsoft.com/msft.

The Office package is classified under the ‘Information Worker’
category.
According to Microsoft ‘Earnings Release’:

***Microsoft Third Quarter FY 2003 Earnings Release
 “Information Worker includes revenue from Microsoft Office; Microsoft
Project; Visio; other standalone information worker applications; and
Professional Services. Revenue from Information Worker was $2.33
billion in the third quarter of fiscal 2003, increasing 9% from the
prior year’s third quarter…”


***Microsoft Second Quarter FY 2003 Earnings Release
“…Revenue from Information Worker was $2.29 billion in the second
quarter of fiscal 2003, increasing 8% from the prior year’s second
quarter…”

***Details for previous quarters are available at
http://www.microsoft.com/msft/earn.mspx


This information was primarily collected from assorted News website.
Some URLs are given alongside the extract. This also provides
information about the copies sold:
“Microsoft Office is the world standard in productivity soft-ware. It
generates $8 billion in annual sales, about one third of Microsoft's
total annual revenue. Microsoft has sold an estimated that 150 million
of its Office package. Of this 80 Million copies are that of Office
XP. Quarter 1 2003 earnings of US$1.88 billion on revenues of US$2.39
billion.
Office has international presence of 35 language specific versions
which are distributed worldwide.

According to http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-01-21-simdesk-cover_x.htm
Microsoft's Office is used on 94% of America's office PCs.

Article in CNET dated August 21, 2002, 2:29 PM PT Says:
Retailers have sold 300,000 copies of the academic version of Office
XP since October, taking in about $43 million in revenue, according to
NPDTechworld. By comparison, the full standard version has racked up
121,000 retail sales and the standard upgrade version has sold 100,000
since Office XP's release in May 2001.


Other Versions of Office: Past and Future
=========================
The latest version of Office which is yet to be officially released
has been given to a Half-Million Beta 2 Testers.
[http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030310/sfm111_1.html]

Some figures about earlier version of Office (Office 97) can be found
at [http://netscape.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_845.html]

Detailed information (priced very high) at  IDC which contains :
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jhtml?containerId=28775 



Hope that helps.

muhammad-ga
Google Answers Researcher

It would have been nice to provide the answers clearly labeled in the
response instead of buried in the text and sites.