Microsoft Will Still Be Fine Even If Windows PCs Keep Tanking, Says Apple Blogger

The PC market is declining, Microsoft's tablet business isn't doing much and Windows 8 is continuing to elicit howls of protest from users frustrated with its shortcomings.

But even if Microsoft's fortunes really tank, the OS will still have enough gravity to remain an attractive platform for developers, Apple blogger Horace Dediu said in a Monday blog post.

Despite the tepid uptake for Windows 8, Windows still dominates the traditional PC market with more than 91 percent share, according to NetMarketShare's latest figures for May.

But if tablets are considered PCs—and Microsoft believes they should be—then Windows now has about 60 percent market share and could drop below 50 percent this year, Dediu noted.

Still, even if Windows drops to 20 percent market share, developers will still write plenty of Windows apps.

That's because, despite a declining share, when factoring in tablets and smartphones, the market is still wildly growing. It will hit 4 billion users in the next five years, with each user owning 1.5 devices, Dediu predicts.

Twenty percent of that is one billion devices, "making such an ecosystem 'good enough' for the average developer," Dediu said in the blog post.