Bill Gates Became the Richest Man Again

After years of being on the second place after a Mexican millionaire, William Gates is now back to being the richest person on the Earth again. Within the last 6 years, Bill Gates was number two to Carlos Slim, playing telecom monopoly in Mexico and gaining Park Lane and Mayfair.

But 2012 turned out to be a bad year for Slim. He hasn’t gone to jail, but still he failed to collect $2 billion in revenues, because Mexico’s Congress has passed a monopoly-busting telecom bill.
The latter threatened Slim’s company America Movil’s supreme rule of the market. This is why press reports announced that after a recent stock surge, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates became the richest person on the Earth again. At the moment, his fortune equals to $72.1 billion, which is $550 million more than the Slim’s.

In other words, Bill Gates’ wealth has increased 10% this year after Microsoft’s shares have risen. By the way, this is despite Bill and his wife Melinda giving over $28 billion to charity. Actually, the couple is going to eventually give away 95% of their fortune, which is quite generous.


However, the industry experts may seem at a loss to explain how Bill Gates and Microsoft could be doing so well – the matter is that the papers only talk about very poor sales for Windows 8 and the stories emerge how the company had failed to monetize the mobile and tablet market. However, Bill Gates claimed that he expects the new operating system to build momentum over time. Taking into account that iPad owners may be frustrated by the lack of a keyboard and Microsoft Office functionality, Gates may appear right. Finally, the recent reports revealed another unexpected source of revenue for Microsoft – from its competitors. Since Android uses some of Microsoft’s patents, the company now receives $8 for every Android phone made. 

By: SaM