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I was surprised to read today that Windows 10 will almost certainly be a loss-leader for Microsoft.
Apparently, the days when its flagship operating system provides the bread-and-butter income for Microsoft are well and truly over. In fact, according to some reports, the company is even considering giving it away for free.
What has happened to turn such a valuable asset into a the equivalent of those little toys you used to get in a packet of corn flakes or Weetbix?
It's not like an OS is any less necessary than it once was.
It's not as if there are fewer computers out there demanding an OS.
So why give away the goose that, for so long, has laid the golden egg?
Well it all boils down to economics.
Back in the days when even a modest desktop computer cost more than a car it was easy to charge an arm and a leg for the OS. Those were also the days when operating systems (such as MSDOS and early versions of Windows) were far less complex -- some would say almost trivial pieces of code.
The cost of creating such an OS was low and the price paid by consumers was high -- which meant lots of profit for Microsoft. There was also very little in the way of competition -- no Linux, no Android, no real threat from Apple. These were the halcyon days of the PC and Microsoft.
Jump forward a few decades and things have changed -- a lot!
Now consumers can buy a netbook or laptop for just a few hundred dollars. There's just no way you can charge as much for the OS as for the hardware, even though the latest incarnations of Windows are an order of magnitude more complex and functional than the old MSDOS or Win 95 products.
There has also been a dramatic shift away from the traditional desktop system to more portable computing alternatives. Smartphones and tablets are the device de jour and even though Microsoft has dabbled in creating slab-specific versions of Windows, the result has definitely been an "epic fail".
Even on the desktop, Microsoft has had to face the small but omnipresent threat that an ever-improving and expanding Linux represents. I made the switch from Windows to Linux as my primary OS quite a few years ago and have never looked back. My initial fears that I'd have to hunt to find the applications I needed were unfounded and the gradual transition of many activities to the web has further reduced the reliance on stand-alone aps that were the Achille's heel of Linux a decade or two ago. These days, so long as you've got a browser, the OS you're using is far less important than it used to be.
So there you have it... Microsoft are having real troubles coming up with a way to return a profit on their investment in the latest versions of Windows and version 10 has become the loss-leader I refereed to earlier. Apparently (according to this Arstechnica story they're considering a range of revenue-generating options including a possible subscription.
I didn't think I'd every actually say this but I think that one of Windows' biggest problems is that it's just too good. Windows XP was the first of the "really good" versions and because it was so good, there was no clear imperative to upgrade when Vista and even Win7 came along.
Now that, by discontinuing support, they've forced most users onto Windows 7 or 8, there's still no imperative for people to upgrade to 10 -- simply because the current version already does everything they want.
Is failure the ultimate price of success?
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