The real reason is far more simple, Ballmer said it "a single winning strategy instead of multiple winning strategies"

Management trends at the end of the 90's was being 'lean': cut in products count, suppliers count, head count.

MS had a monopoly at that time, they believed that ending VFP would just reduce cost while preserving revenues because each and every VFP developers would have no other choice than moving to another Windows-based dev tools, or die, which microsoft no longer cared about.

In between corporations that ms regarded as defeated, dead, Apple and Netscape (Firefox), plus some new others (Google and others), changed the landscape in a way that no one at microsoft was able to forecast.

My guess is that Ballmer's successor will do the exact opposite. Wait and see.

>This doesn't talk numbers - but it's a good article.
>http://weblogs.foxite.com/joel_leach/2011/10/13/why-microsoft-cancelled-visual-foxpro/
>
>>I don't have any. I don't have the staff to do such world wide market research. But the number you propose is absolutely not believable. Could there be 150,000,000 PCs running some form of a VFP app? Let's say that's the number. But I can't believe that a VFP app was the driving factor that caused those PCs to be purchased.
>>
>>>So, which figures do you propose?
>>>
>>>>So, you're attributing the sales of 150,000,000 copies of Windows directly to VFP? That's pure bullsh*t.
>>>
>>>>>over 300k devs, 500 users/dev
>>>
>>>>>>So, how did you do it and what number did you come up with?
>>>
>>>>>>>We did.