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Microsoft can add closing the day as a $2 trillion business to the list of accomplishments it has made today, with the announcement of Windows 11. According to CNN Business, this makes it the second American publicly listed business ever to have a market value of more than $2 trillion (the other member of the club is Apple, which attained it in August 2020).
It’s simple to see how 2020 aided Microsoft’s success: the PC market increased by more than 10% in 2020, according to IDC and Canalys projections, and appears to have maintained some of that pace this year. Microsoft also found success with its Surface products, Xbox content, and cloud services – the firm claims that its Intelligent Cloud business alone generated $48 billion in revenue in its fiscal year 2020.
There’s also the aforementioned Windows 11 announcement, which might push upgrades for those whose PCs don’t meet the minimal requirements. The company’s market worth briefly surpassed $2 trillion earlier this week, but it had fallen just short by the time markets closed. According to Yahoo Finance, Microsoft was able to close the market today with a market capitalization of $2.009 trillion.
Moreover Yesterday, Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer will be “removed” in Windows 11. At first, I was concerned that it meant Internet Explorer would survive until the final nail in its coffin on June 15th, 2022, but it is now completely gone from Windows 11. “ Windows 11 will not have the Internet Explorer 11 desktop version. “The default browser for Windows 11 is Microsoft Edge,” a Microsoft official tells The Verge. “The MSHTML engine is included in the Windows 11 operating system and is used to power IE mode in Microsoft Edge.”
