Microsoft to stop producing Windows versions

[backstreetboy]

Yeah, ok except how is MS planning on making bucks from Windows in 3 years time? Yearly subscriptions? If not I could conceivably own one windows license that will last me for the rest of my life. There's a part of this that's not being revealed yet.

Just like Red Hat is doing. Charge Enterprises for support etc. There is also Office 365 which they want anybody to get on.

 

[Pox]

New windows free for everyone!

You want to print to your printer, well that's an extra DLC, just fill in these credit card details....
You want to be able to use 2 monitors, well that's an extra DLC, just fill in these credit card details...

Most likely it will be subscription, it's the way they've been leaning.

 

[MrGray]

Through their marketplaces/store. Advertising is the game.

They would only make money like this out of home/individual consumers. Their huge corporate base (where their big money resides) won't be buying apps in an online store. They have a huge installed base of corporate machines which in many cases are single purposed and only do one thing on proprietary apps - i.e. POS, data capturing, etc.

 

[Nick333]

They would only make money like this out of home/individual consumers. Their huge corporate base (where their big money resides) won't be buying apps in an online store. They have a huge installed base of corporate machines which in many cases are single purposed and only do one thing on proprietary apps - i.e. POS, data capturing, etc.

To be fair those sorts of machines aren't going to be getting regular OS upgrades anyway.

 

[MrGray]

To be fair those sorts of machines aren't going to be getting regular OS upgrades anyway.

Sure, the corporate upgrade cycle is slower, but it still needs to happen inevitably, and it is still the lion's share of their revenue AFAIK.

 

[Fulcrum29]

They would only make money like this out of home/individual consumers. Their huge corporate base (where their big money resides) won't be buying apps in an online store. They have a huge installed base of corporate machines which in many cases are single purposed and only do one thing on proprietary apps - i.e. POS, data capturing, etc.

Corporate entities still has to purchase machines and licences, you have VL enterprise products, Azure (which also has its own marketplace). Hybrid environments are growing rapidly at this stage, and MS partners are encouraged to pursue the hybrid route. Applications, SaaS sold, licensed and subscribed to in their marketplace is a strong revenue model. Many app suites, the vendors, are in the process to make their services available through this model, it will be part in the repository and rollouts will be eased through this process. What MS is doing now is making their tools available to the market to allow the vendors to ‘push’ and sell their products and services.

SaaS (or applications in general) is currently eating into the traditional software slice of the pie, gaming distribution already went to the cloud, and enterprise products are to follow.

 

[MickZA]

Most of the revenue generated by Windows for Microsoft came from sales of new PCs and this was unlikely to be affected by the change, Mr Kleynhans pointed out.

^^This

... still be interesting to know the percentage of revenue generated by Retail & DSP's though.

 

[kianm]

bringing new innovations and updates in an ongoing manner

The way i'm skeptical about some of their updates nowadays. I think some windows updates sit right next to malware when it comes to damaging the OS sometimes