disolitude said:
Windows 8 will continue to evolve and should be considered version 1.0 that Microsoft, OEM partners and app developers are going to biuld on for many years to come. I doubt we will ever see Windows 9, but instead I wouldn't be surprised if Microsofts OS just becomes 'Windows' with yearly updates adding features and capabilities. Chrome OS is doing the exact same thing as is OSX, Android, iOS and almost every other OS on the planet. |
MS hardly make any revenue from retail upgrade copies anyway. The yearly updates should be free, as a platform for increasing integration into MS's own paid services (Store, Live, Bing, cloud, tablet/phone integration). They will still make Windows money from new PC sales.
MS can't rely on lockin by default, so they need to actually make all these services a better choice than buying into Apple, or Google, or a patchwork of smaller services.
Customers don't care about tech, or features. They know what they want to do with a computer, and it's games/music/video/social/office. MS needs to make it as easy as possible for customers to access the MS version of those things, and stop thinking in terms of software versions.
Now I don't think it will succeed but it's a better strategy than pretending it's 1998.
