TheVerge recently published an article about MS considering making its Windows Phone OS and Windows RT available for free to OEMs.
That question has been occupying my thoughts lately due in part to two recent Forums posts, and the ensuing comments. I held that due to Google’s business model, Android and Apple’s ‘Updates’ policies, Windows would probably follow suit.
Preston Gralla has been an astute observer and author (more than 40 books and countless articles and reviews) and he differs.
His argument is that those business models are precisely what will prevent “free Windows forever’. It’s a matter of dollars and sense (pun intended).
Apple’s update policy sort of forces new device purchase, and they aren’t ‘cheap’. Apple’s updates cause the hardware to become slower and slower, and engender app updates which do the same. To me, while these updates do improve performance on some devices (the newest), they force purchase on the older device owners. That smacks of ‘enforced obsolescence’ which isn’t a nice thing. I’m not sure this is a ‘forced’ thing, but its result does favor their sales figures.
Google’s income comes from advertising and the use of Google’s various services, so the OEMs get the Android OS for free. No revelations there.
Microsoft is a bird of another feather altogether. Licensing Windows is likely to bring in between $4.1 and $4.3 billion. Bing ad sales and MSs services can’t bring in anything like that. So, freebie Windows OS won’t be in the cards for desktops (shrinking sales) nor laptops (also shrinking). Probably not for tablets either, since their sales have plateaued and even contracted so far in 2014.
The only place where freebie W8.1 and possibly W9 will come into play is in phones, to encourage W8.1 phone sales. Maybe tablets as well at the low end of the cost spectrum, to enhance that (again, to encourage sales) especially in foreign markets.
I think that’s a very persuasive argument. What do you think?
Source:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/windows/23629/free-windows-forever-microsofts-future