[ghaff]

>There's way more money in Enterprise B2B than there is in B2C.

Apple would like a word--although arguably their B2C success translated into B2B in a world where corporations increasingly didn't just dictate employee gear decisions.

But to your other point, Microsoft (though I credit this more to Nadella than Ballmer) were absolutely able to parlay Microsoft's enterprise strength to Azure in government/enterprise which AWS didn't really get at first and Google was even slower to do.

[alephnerd]

> Apple would like a word

Apple's success is a form of survivorship bias.

Multiple previously massive B2C vendors like Nokia, Ericsson, Sony, HP, Dell, RiM, etc either died trying to compete in the B2C space or pivoted out as a result.

Google, Huawei, and Samsung are only able to compete against Apple because they are subsidizing their B2C ventures with their B2B product lines.

MS in the 2000s could have joined that dustbin of history as well because the old school "Windows" division was very B2C and Consumer oriented at the expense of Enterprise.

[ghaff]

Certainly, Apple could have basically died at various times.

I could also name a ton of massive B2B software (to say nothing of hardware) vendors that died over time.

Yes, Microsoft basically transformed themselves from a B2C vendor (where they're now increasingly irrelevant) to a mostly exclusively B2B vendor. They're basically Azure at this point plus Office365 for their base. I wouldn't bet on the future of Xbox at this point.