How much $$$ is Microsoft really making with Vista?

Check this out...

Vista - a $6 Billion Dollars Operating System - The best billions Bill Gates has ever spent - Softpedia

I don't really know what the markup of it is but let's assume that they make $100 off each license on average (which is a conservative estimate wouldn't you say?).

If my math is correct, that's $18 billion dollars as of the last public claim of 180 million copies sold.

Microsoft: 180 million Vista licenses now sold
If my math is correct again...that's TRIPLE the initial costs!

Of course they likely spent a little more after-market like for Jerry Seinfeld and stuff like that but I don't think it’s anywhere near $12 billion dollars.

Hi,

The article points out 15 million copies of Ultimate comes to $6bn -smart business for microsoft.

Then of course, they'd already done a lot of the work for Server 2008 - a sort of industrial version of Vista.

Also, Seven ( or whatever the new o/s will be called) is based on Vista, so they can make that in half the time Vista took - so I guess they save half the development cost .

Curious as to the story on OEM versions - wonder how much the big boys like Acer and Dell pay for each license.

SIW2

Come to think of it, the 180 million doesn't include the volume business licenses bought before the official release.