Update: Updated statistics based on award categories (not people) due to the number of multi-category awardees.

In previous years, I performed some comparisons on the MVP population after every award cycle. So, time to get some fresh statistics after July 2019 award cycle.

For comparison, I had a look at the public MVP statistics of July 3rd, 2018 against those of July 3rd, 2019, as the public MVP site was closed the first two days. From the numbers, it is clear that this cycle the number of MVPs went down again, from 3.030 last year, to 2.634 now (-13%).

The following table contains the changes per award category from July 2018 to
July 2019:

Competence	Jul-18	Jul-19	Change
AI	58	84	45%
Business Applications	164	166	0%
Cloud and Datacenter Management	303	232	-23%
Data Platform	369	332	-10%
Enterprise Mobility	122	106	-13%
Microsoft Azure	444	409	-8%
Office Development	33	47	42%
Office Apps & Services	606	491	-19%
Developer Technologies	781	644	-17%
Windows and Devices for IT	87	57	-34%
Windows Development	186	119	-37%
Total MVPs	3066	2634	-14%

Few notes:

• The total number of MVP’s doesn’t equal the total number of awards, as people can be awarded in more than one category; there are 52 MVP’s with multiple award categories (one even in 3 categories).
• Former single product categories, such as Access or OneNote, were moved under the Office Apps & Services category (which was rebranded from Office Servers & Services). Those numbers are merged for the 2018 column.
• When comparing to earlier years, the award categories were restructured in 2017, e.g. Visual Studio and Development Technologies became Developer Technologies.

When zooming in on the Office Apps & Services category, the awards per country are shown below. Be advised that 26 are anonymous MVP’s or have profiles without location.

Country	Jul’18	Jul’19	Country	Jul’18	Jul’19	Country	Jul’18	Jul’19
ARE	1	2	GBR	23	28	POL	2	4
AUS	17	20	HRV	5	4	PRK	6	12
AUT	2	3	HUN	2	2	PRT	3	2
BEL	8	8	IND	12	13	RUS	5	8
BGR	1	2	IRL	1	1	SAU	1	1
BIH	1	1	ISR		1	SGP	3	3
BRA	2	10	ITA	8	6	SLV		1
CAN	28	31	JOR	1	1	SRB	1	1
CHE	4	2	JPN	11	22	SVK	1	1
CHN	14	16	LKA	4	1	SVN	1	2
COL	2	4	MEX	2	5	SWE	6	5
CRI		1	MKD	2	2	THA	1	3
CZE	3	2	MYS	1	1	TUR	4	2
DEU	17	25	NGA	1	1	TWN		3
DNK	2	6	NLD	13	21	UKR	1	2
EGY	1	1	NOR	5	6	URY	1	1
ESP	5	8	NPL	1	1	USA	89	120
FIN	2	3	NZL	4	6	ZAF	4	5
FRA	16	20	PAK	2	2

The countries Argentina, Chile, Latvia, Peru, Romania and Greece are no longer represented in the Office Apps & Services category, while Costa Rica, Israel, Taiwan and El Salvador are new to the table.

Month	Oct 2016	Jan 2017	Jun 2017	Jul 2017	Jun 2018	Jul 2018	Mar 2019	Jul 2019
OSS	538	505 (-7%)	532 (+5%)	449 (-16%)	490 (+2%)	383 (-21%)	622 (+62%)	491 (-22%)
Total	N/A	N/A	4134	3490 (-16%)	3815 (+2%)	3030 (-21%)	3205 (+6%)	2635 (-18%)

Above are the number of Office Apps & Services and total number of MVP’s over the last years. Do note that for March and July 2019 the former product categories are included in the Office Apps & Services category, hence why I included March to have a sense of the changes in the July cycle.

If you have questions or comments, please send them in the comments below.