vlad321 said:
More or less right. By promoting gaming on the 360 more than the PC (one of the few true incentives to use WIndows over alternatives), they will certainly lose some marketshare of their OS/Office profits. The question is if they will make it up with their EDD profits. As I said earlier, a 1% drop in their Client division would have to have the EDD go up by 25% for it to balance out. Somehow I don't think that will happen at all. |
There is a third possibilty: if they know their Client division will lose market share anyway, gaming or not, they MUST grow in other markets. So these moves could mean they already know that despite still growing in absolute numbers, Windows and Office are shrinking, or are going to, in market share.
BTW, another big business opportunity, cellphone market, was already slipping from their hands even before Google's Android made Linux+Java even stronger, as it was already second after Symbian, with iPhone and Blackberry already chewing more and more shares from Windows CE/Mobile. So pushing consoles could also be meant to make up for phones lost opportunity, knowing that Win+Office share won't grow again anymore to achieve the same compensation, a fourth possibility.