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Originally Posted by petermillard
No, it's 'Home & Student' - but then what else would you expect on the 'consumer' version of Win8?
Fewer and fewer people; from Horace Dediu over at Asymco:-
[I]"So Microsoft faces a dilemma. Their business model of expensive software on cheap hardware is not sustainable. The future is nearly free software integrated into moderately priced hardware...
Being charitable, I'd say not a lot. Realistically? Not at all.
Pete |
Folks like John Gruber (warning:Apple fanboy) says bluntlly that Microsoft's model of making money off licensing software is doomed.
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. The math no longer works out for the Windows you-sell-the-hardware-we-sell-the-software model. It works for unit share (cf. Android), but it doesn’t for profit share. Nothing works sustainably in business without profit — profit is the oxygen companies breathe.
Even if Apple’s growth soon slows, Apple already reaps a massive share of the industry’s profits. And if Apple’s growth doesn’t slow in the next year or two, look out. All of Apple’s competitors in the phone industry, save Samsung, are now starving for profit. They’re dying, all of them — HTC is breaking even and the rest are deep in the red.
The iPad is growing faster than the iPhone. The Mac already owns the $999-and-over market (where the margins are), and the iPad owns the tablet market (where the growth is). The PC market is quickly heading to where the phone market already is.
Microsoft Surface is not fundamentally about Microsoft needing to control the entire integrated product in order to compete with the iPad on design. It’s about Microsoft needing to sell the whole thing to sustain its current profitability.
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