There is little doubt that the merging of a mobile and a desktop OS in Windows 8 is highly controversial. In my opinion, it is disastrous for the usability of the product in both environments. The reason that Microsoft is attempting this is, in all likelihood, the maintenance of its income and profits. If Microsoft had designed a mobile OS for tablets based on its "Metro" WP7/7.5 OS, then it would have gotten a relatively low price per license (maybe $15-20 per machine). By giving the full Windows to tablets, then it expects to get the full license fee (anywhere from $35 -$55 per machine). As Microsoft expects the tablets to start substituting for desktops and laptops, this is the only way of maintaining a constant stream of income.
Unfortunately, Microsoft is not making any profits from manufacturing and selling its own tablets (like Apple does); nor does it have any serious income from advertizing (like Google does); Thus, the only way of keeping up profits in a world in which more and more mobile solutions substitute desktops and laptops is to provide a "full" OS to these devices and claim the whole license fee.
Of course, this strategy may backfire badly. Users of desktops/laptops may dislike the imposition of a mobile OS in their work flow, and users of tablets will find little benefit in having access to desktop applications that, by design, are not touch friendly. Thus, by trying to maintain the price per machine at the same level, Microsoft may be signing its own death warrant. At the end, the competition with Google docs (forcing a free cloud version of Office 2010) and the huge pressure by Android and iOS in the mobile space maybe just too much for Microsoft. It just does not have too many revenue streams (no hardware and no advertizing) and the only one remains the license fee per machine.
Unfortunately, Microsoft is not making any profits from manufacturing and selling its own tablets (like Apple does); nor does it have any serious income from advertizing (like Google does); Thus, the only way of keeping up profits in a world in which more and more mobile solutions substitute desktops and laptops is to provide a "full" OS to these devices and claim the whole license fee.
Of course, this strategy may backfire badly. Users of desktops/laptops may dislike the imposition of a mobile OS in their work flow, and users of tablets will find little benefit in having access to desktop applications that, by design, are not touch friendly. Thus, by trying to maintain the price per machine at the same level, Microsoft may be signing its own death warrant. At the end, the competition with Google docs (forcing a free cloud version of Office 2010) and the huge pressure by Android and iOS in the mobile space maybe just too much for Microsoft. It just does not have too many revenue streams (no hardware and no advertizing) and the only one remains the license fee per machine.
My Computer
System One
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- OS
- windows 7