Microsoft warned its partners, assemblers of computer technology, the decline in prices for cheap Windows technology, reports RBC with reference to one of the largest OEMs.According to him, manufacturers of laptops priced below $ 250 will now pay $ 10-15 instead of the traditional 50.
Until 2014, Microsoft did not reduce the price of the full version of Windows below $ 50 regardless of how much is a computer with this system. But last spring, it became known that collectors tablets with Intel processors and 8-inch screens nothing for Windows does not pay - is it possible to release Microsoft partners such plates at a price of about $ 300. On these plates running the same version of Windows, and that on laptops, and on ordinary desktop computers. These models compete with cheap tablets with the system Android, for which producers do not pay anything at all its developer - Google.
Competitors jostle for Microsoft and the PC market. Win new laptop running Windows for the first time in the history of this market fell below 90%, reported two weeks ago, the online edition of Digitimes citing Taiwanese computer manufacturers. According to Digitimes, to compete with the MacBook Air and Chromebooks, Microsoft provides a free Windows laptops collectors. It's not as representatives of the object PC assemblers. According to them, it is a giant discounts, unprecedented for Microsoft.
Microsoft spokesman did not confirm the new price for Windows for cheap laptops. In mid-July at a conference for partners Microsoft COO Kevin Turner said that the new year, HP and Acer will release a laptop for $ 200. He did not identify the characteristics of these laptops, but said that the new Acer laptop for $ 250 has a 15.6 inch screen, Intel Celeron processor with a clock frequency of 2.16 megahertz and hard drive to 500 GB. Judging by the presentation slides with Turner, who published edition of The Verge, compete cheap laptops on Windows it will be with "Chromebooks."
Google unveils Chrome OS notebooks in 2011 and their share in sales is minimal now: analytical companies do not even give them out in public with your computer. In July, one of their manufacturers, Dell, even suspended sales through its website model Dell Chromebook 11 - the company does not have time to collect them in the right quantities. Yet their model "Chromebooks" cost less than $ 200 release Samsung, Toshiba, Lenovo and HP.
According to Turner, the new laptops to Microsoft for $ 200 should be on sale at the end of the year, the peak New Year's sale. Accordingly, about this time, users can benefit from a discount on Windows.
Microsoft previously experimented with cheap Windows, releasing in 2004 a special version of Windows XP for developing countries at $ 10-40. But this system was not complete: it was impossible to run more than three programs at the same time, and in each of them it was impossible to open more than three windows. Then, using the cheap version Windows Microsoft fought not with competitors, and piracy.