It seems to me that the last few months from the marketing behemoth that is Microsoft has been all about the birth of Windows 7. Yet do any of you remember 35mm slide carousels? Or maybe you still have an aging OHP sat at the back of some of your meeting rooms? Twenty five years ago PowerPoint was launched running only on Apple Mac by a company called Forethought. A quote from the New York Times when Microsoft bought the company back in 1987 said:
"Forethought makes a program called PowerPoint that allows users of Apple Macintosh computers to make overhead transparencies or flip charts. Some industry officials think such 'desktop presentations' have the potential to be as big a market as 'desktop publishing'"
If it had stayed on the Mac I wonder where it would be today but instead the company that created it was bought by Microsoft and we now have PowerPoint 2007.
Some of the statistics are interesting too:
· approximately 100 million users worldwide
· the average presentation is 250 minutes long
· The average PowerPoint slide contains 40 words
· An Amazon book search for PowerPoint reveals nearly 3000 items
· About 30 million presentations are made with PowerPoint everyday
· Earns well over £1bn annual revenue for Microsoft
PowerPoint is often beaten up and the phrase “death by PowerPoint” is well known and frequently applies but we think that’s more to do with the presentation creator rather than the software itself. When you stop to think you can probably also recall great presentations too and the difference is not in the tool but in the user.
We have helped our clients win over $700m of business helping them to design and deliver PowerPoint presentations and believe passionately in the power of presenting well. If you want to look at how we approach it then hop over to our Achieving Yes page on our web site. The BBC has also noted the anniversary and has an interesting page on PowerPoint too.
What do you think of the old girl?
Happy anniversary PowerPoint !!
