As India slept inconspicuously, Satya Nadella’s Microsoft made its most ‘Indian’ announcement till date in the wee hours earlier today. All versions of its Windows operating system will be made available for free on devices sporting less than a 9-inch display.
No jokes. You read that right: Microsoft’s Windows OS will be made available for free for device manufacturers as long as these devices (smartphones, phablets and tablets) have less than a 9-inch display.
This potentially game-changing announcement came at Microsoft’s Build 2014 conference currently underway in San Francisco, and is undoubtedly aimed at improving Microsoft Windows’ market share on high-growth markets and countering the meteoric rise of its chief competitor -- Google’s Android operating system.
Relief for OEMs, great news for customers!
According to a Reuters report, currently Microsoft charges between US $5 to $15 for every smartphone and tablet that has a Windows operating system running on it. Device manufacturers in turn factor in these costs on the final sales price of each of these Windows devices.
But all that changes after Microsoft’s latest announcement. This means, going forward, device manufacturers can install Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 on devices with a lesser than 9-inch display size at no additional cost.
This is a great development from customer's point of view, because they will in turn reap the benefits of reduced manufacturing costs for Windows devices -- be it smartphones, tablets, phablets or even hybrids.
By giving away free Windows OS to device manufactures, Microsoft seems to be geared towards focusing on monetizing Windows Store, apps, and its other cloud-based services.
This new free Windows development is definitely better than the supposed Windows 8.1 with Bing experiment that Microsoft was contemplating last month, where it was considering a stripped down Windows OS with lower costs for greater appeal towards device manufacturers.
Historic move
In some ways, this latest move by Satya Nadella-led Microsoft is in stark contrast to something that Bill Gates believed deeply and helped Microsoft become a tech giant -- that all software should be paid.
But in a post-PC world and constantly shifting market realities, free or freemium is the way to go, if Microsoft and Windows is to have any chance of breaking the Android-iOS hegemony of the market.
Just a few days ago, Microsoft announced the free availability of Office Mobile on Android and iOS devices. This is another significant shift from Microsoft’s traditional mindset of keeping Windows at the centre of deploying its Office services. But with Microsoft Office itself being a cloud-based service, the impetus seems to be on getting it on as many devices as possible.
And the same philosophy seems to be at work with today’s free Windows announcement.
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