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Why Microsoft Shouldn't Worry About Cannibalizing Their Userbases
New submitter coyote_oww writes "A ComputerWorld analysis article suggests that Microsoft should stop worrying about one product cutting into another product's sales, and concentrate on putting their best foot foward regardless of the impact on product lines. The big impact would be the price of Windows: '... Microsoft must, at least in the main, sell devices based on lower prices. And the only significant component of a Windows-powered device that can be cut further — hardware margins are at or very near the bone, and have been for years — is the Windows license.' It's still possible they could sell Windows versions at different rates for different devices, but that could get hard to justify to consumers over the long haul."
Release windows for free, and we will finally see how it competes.
You know what I want? A lower-cost Windows targeted at gamers. I don't need drivers for scanners, printers, fax and other unnecessary crap if all I do is play games on it.
A Windows with less processes running would also mean a faster computer able to dedicate more resources to the games instead of crap I don't need.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
The article is on ComputerWorld, which is owned by IDG. They are quoting a research analyst from IDC, which is also owned by IDG. What's the motivation for writing this article?
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Steve should consider throwing his best chair forward.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
from the article: "As part of the reorganization, Microsoft will consolidate all of its client OSes, including Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows Phone 8, Windows Embedded and Xbox, into a single engineering group [...] The Windows desktop client and mobile have a lot of common functionality, and a combined group could have a lot of synergy".
I fully agree, that's a good strategy (and it was about time)... oh, and one o the few times the word "synergy" makes sense!
The motto of the CEO at a company I worked for many years ago.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Windows is a product. When you buy it pre-installed on a machine, prices are already cut to the bone with volume discounts to the manufacturer. Someone has to pay for the security updates, the patches, and so on when it's run by a monolithic corporation instead of an open source community.
I've no beef with the price I paid for my Win7 laptop -- and I know that maybe $50-100 of that purchase price was for the Windows license. Perfectly reasonable.
I use Ubuntu LTS on my "main" machine, but that's because I like Linux, not because Windows is "too expensive."
Furthermore, precisely what product line would be cannibalized by cutting Windows prices further? WinPhone (which no one wants and is a different code base)? WinRT (which no one wants because it's a piece of incompatible crap)? XBox (which doesn't even have an installable OS)?
This article is essentially flamebait to spark discussion, and nothing more. There is nothing pragmatic or realistic about it.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Cannibalize your own product line before the competition does is an obvious necessity, yet it is the hardest thing for managers to actually do.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
the introduction of Windows Genuine Advantage.
Before WGA was introduced, most people thought windows came free when they purchased a new computer. The rather high price for the OS was completely obfuscated. The cost was hidden because there was no impediment to installing a copy onto any machine so they thought it was free. All you needed was a copy. Well, MS decided they wanted to get paid for all of those installs. So, they introduced WGA. So, what happened... Well, people still bought new machines... But, when they went to use the new OS version on their old machines it didn't work because it could only be validated on one machine... Now, people still wanted the new OS so they went to see how much it cost and they were horrified by how much a copy of windows cost.
This left people with four choices:
1. Don't upgrade... (Look at how long it has taken to get people to stop using Win XP.)
2. Pay the high price. (Probably not)
3. Bootleg a copy. (Bit-torrent has lots of copies)
4. Look someplace else. (Have you noticed how well Apple has been doing lately)
Notice, in all but one unlikely scenario, MS doesn't make anymore money than they did before the introduction of WGA. But what they have done is enlighten people to the true cost of MS windows. Additionally, when someone doesn't upgrade or goes with an alternative to Windows, then third party applications suffer because the installed base of the current windows is diminished...
MS quite simply destroyed their own monopoly by trying to get people to pay for something they would never pay for.
Every time MS releases a new OS I keep thinking they would figure this out and drop WGA but they keep on striving for a smaller and smaller market share.
Simply put, having a solid monopoly is MUCH more valuable than the few sales they have made as a result of WGA...
Oh and lets not forget, WGA just pisses people off so as a paying customer... You get punished... Great business model if you want to shrink your market share.
The article talks as though Microsoft is a monolithic entity that will like a single intent. Like any large organization there it is a conglomeration of parts and they mostly act in their self interest than the interest of the whole organization. Most of the time there is a large overlap between the self interest and interest of the larger body. But Microsoft has some perverse incentives like giving part of the revenue stream from a product line as compensation to the top managers of that line. Sounds great in theory as a motivation factor but it can backfire too. These people in top management well versed in the palace intrigues have to let some other part cannibalize their revenue stream for the interest of the organization as a whole. The track record is they won't. Only when the "partner level" managers' bonuses (or is it bonii?) are tied to the over all performance of the company, not the individual parts under their control, they will let internal cannibalization. But letting their bonii depend on large parts of the company they have no control over is a tough sell too. It is a problem that developed over a long time. It won't be solved in short time.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Are you sure? Last time I checked, I can only license it, not buy it like I buy products. Also, if it is a product, how come, from the best I can tell by reading the license, product liability doesn't cover it?
Don't interfere with your enemy while they are busy making a mistake. Got it? Whose side are you on, anyway.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Showing my age. The original IBM PC was at first too weak to compete with IBM's higher-end offerings. But the AT with 6mhz chip was getting close. People started overclocking their cpus. IBM responded by tweaking the BIOS to not boot if the cpu was faster than 6 mhz (assholes).
This affected a lot of people who ran into problems with the original 20 mb drive, and took their machine in to be serviced. IBM "upgraded" the BIOS when replacing the bad hard drives (assholes).
The modders responded with a "turbo-switch". It was a a manual toggle. The cpu ran at 6 mhz when booting, to pass the boot-time checking. Then you could flip it to 10 mhz or whatever. IBM eventually came out with faster ATs, but the clone makers had eaten up a lot of the PC market by then.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user