Quote:
Originally Posted by Barty
MS was late to the GUI too, and look how that turned out.
|
Windows won the desktop GUI wars because it was the cheapest viable option.
The first really usable version of Windows was 3.0, and at that time you could buy a Unix workstation ($10,000+), a Mac ($5,000-10,000?), an IBM PC with OS/2 ($2,000-10,000?), or a generic PC with Windows ($1,000-2,000?). Prices are based on what I could find on the web and I don't remember whether early OS/2 ran on generic PCs as well as PS/2.
Windows was a joke compared to a Sun workstation, but you could buy a new car for the difference in price. Even OS/2 required more powerful hardware than Windows and came with a lot less free software. Pretty soon Windows had the largest software market overall, and when Windows 95 came out it was all over for the competition.
Windows will not be the cheapest option on tablets, will not have the largest tablet software base, and will still be seen as the cheap, low-quality brand it always was. Perhaps they can sell to business markets that are still tied to Windows, but I honestly can't see how they can sell Windows on consumer tablets short of massively subsidising tablet OEMs to push the price way down. Users looking for a premium brand will keep buying iPads, us cheapskates who don't want the Apple lock-in will keep buying Android.