Steve Ballmer On Microsoft’s Future
Most analysts think the price of Windows to our hardware customers, people like Dell Inc. (DELL ), is about 50 bucks. If you stop and think about it, most people are going to own their PCs for four years. So do we offer $12 a year of value where you can run tremendously more applications, it’s tremendously easier to take care of? It’s $12 a year when people are spending $90 to $100 a month on cell-phone bills, and we’re talking about saving you hours and hours of time. I think it’s a pretty good value proposition, myself.
Which assumes that the customer is the consumer when in reality it is Dell. Now $12/year for how many MILLIONS of desktops, laptops and servers. So the real question, Does Windows provide $12,000,000 of value each year to Dell?
One reply on “The Million dollar question”
50 for four years? Umm…. steve needs to do the numbers again, because MS wants you to buy new licenses (hell, practically FORCES you to buy new licenses) every two years. And the price for the “the little guy”* is $200, $150 if they upgrade (which assumes that you bought it full price before, and made your computer yourself, which MS doesn’t want).
So $200/2 = $100 per year, or about $10 a month.
Now does about $10/month strike you as a lot of money if you got a really great service, with no or few problems, great support, and from a company you trust?
No, it wouldn’t be a lot. But MS provides windows, which is buggy, unstable, hard to use compared to other OSes, with a lot of problems, has crappy support, and is a company that few (if any) really trust.
You make the call.
* I hate the term “end user” and I also hate the term “consumer”…. we are ceasing to be citizens nowadays and are instead consumers and users… but citizen in this context is just weird, so what other term can I use??