Posted on 07/29/2015 9:28:49 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) launched its much-awaited Windows 10 operating system at midnight on Wednesday.
Windows 10, which comes almost three years after the launch of the company's last operating system, will be available in 190 countries as a free upgrade for users of Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1.
The 'free' strategy is a calculated gamble, designed to put Windows on as many devices as possible. The company would then make up for any lost revenue by selling services such as Office over the Internet, or cloud.
The new operating system is designed to work across laptops, desktop and smartphones and is part of Chief Executive Satya Nadella's push toward breaking Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Google Inc's (GOOGL.O) stranglehold in the mobile arena.
Windows faces intense competition from Apple's iOS and Google's Android, which have cornered the lion's share of the mobile market.
"There are massive headwinds in Microsoft's bread-and-butter PC business, making it crucial that the Windows 10 cloud approach opens up new growth avenues for the Windows business," FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives wrote in a note on Monday.
The immediate revenue hit from the 'free' strategy is unlikely to be large, as Microsoft gets no more than $500 million of its $20 billion or so annual Windows revenue from upgrades, analysts have said.
The vast majority of Windows revenue comes from hardware makers installing it on new PCs and businesses paying for multi-year licenses.
Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said last week that Microsoft was looking to generate additional revenue by building search and gaming capabilities into the Windows 10 interface.
Microsoft, which unveiled Windows 10 in September, skipped Windows 9 altogether, to put some distance between the new system and Windows 8, which confused many users by ditching the start button menu
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
It’s already available — I’ve downloaded it and started the upgrade prior to leaving work this morning.
Updated when I got up this morning. Working GREAT! The only issue has to do with Cortana. The microphone on Mrs. p6’s HP laptop seems to not have been ever set up properly.
Edge is lean and fast! writing on the browser screen works with the mouse.
Haven’t tried Hello yet.
Everything else is working as it should.
Today at 2pm Eastern Windows Weekly will have a Windows 10 Cyber party via https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly
I expect to see issues addressed there.
Updated and changed my SSID to quit sharing my wifi with “friends”.
“The immediate revenue hit from the ‘free’ strategy is unlikely to be large, as Microsoft gets no more than $500 million of its $20 billion or so annual Windows revenue from upgrades, analysts have said.
The vast majority of Windows revenue comes from hardware makers installing it on new PCs and businesses paying for multi-year licenses.”
And when hardware manufacturers sell fewer machines due to the free upgrade there will be significant erosion in that revenue stream as well.
This will be a disaster for Microsoft on many levels.
So far so good. I don’t have any complaints.
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