Microsoft buried the "Vista" brand and started banging on some drum which refers to an imaginary O/S that they can always claim "is still in beta!"
--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
The turbulent economy could hinder enterprise adoption of Windows 7, even though many companies opted to skip Windows Vista and are still running the outdated Windows XP OS, analysts said.
Although the beta of Windows 7 released in January is getting good reviews, that may not be enough to inspire businesses to upgrade, given their tight IT budgets and the fact that many are cutting costs in any way they can.
To many people, the Starter restriction will be, if you’ll pardon the expression, a non-starter. Between browsers, email programs, iTunes and other software, it won’t take long for the average user to bump into the three-application limit. What’s more, this is the first time Microsoft will be imposing such a restriction on an operating system sold in the U.S. and other developing markets (there’s a three-application limit on the starter edition of Windows Vista, Microsoft’s current installment of Windows, but that product is only sold in emerging markets).
In the blog, Bancroft says that Microsoft's margins on XP netbooks are not strong, and the company will feel pressure to increase revenue from Windows 7 netbooks -- a move that he suggests could lead to netbooks that are too expensive. Bancroft also expressed doubt that netbooks with small solid state disks (also known as flash drives) would be able to handle Windows 7.
Instead, it's cutting back even further. After announcing last year that it would support just two operating systems, Windows Mobile and Android, it is laying off Windows Mobile engineers, indicating that Motorola is going to focus exclusively on Android.
This is not only another sign that Microsoft's decline is accelerating; Microsoft is behaving like an animal in its death throes, showing little interest in pursuing new prey.
Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of the mobile open source company Funambol, has all but declared Windows Mobile dead in a recent blog entry. Is he right, or is there still life left in the mobile platform from Microsoft?
Comments
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2009-02-09 04:19:50
David Gerard
2009-02-09 20:08:41
Are Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot?
If I thought Microsoft was good at joined-up thinking (Apple style), I'd think they were planning to put something like this out themselves and cannibalise their own market instead of letting Google cannibalise it for them. But they're not good at that sort of joined-up thinking. I suspect they'll make a half-arsed effort to do something like that.
Imagine ... a usable Windows 7 Starter Edition, because one of the apps is an app platform.