14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft hasn’t yet unveiled the pricing model that it wants to adopt for Windows 10, but some sources familiar with the company’s plans indicated that a freeware license could also be offered in order to make sure that more people would move to the new OS.
While this would be really good news for users worldwide, an analyst warns that adopting such a dramatically different approach would be really risky for Microsoft because it would be then very hard to return to a new pricing model that would have customers charged for their copy of Windows.
Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research, says in a statement for Silicon Angle that Microsoft needs to play its cards right if it really wants to offer Windows 10 free of charge and then adopt a new paid license strategy for Windows.
Why would someone move from free Windows to a paid version?
“Given the strategic importance of Windows 10 itself and Microsoft’s desire to get as many users as possible onto the platform, pricing it right is critical. However, there’s also a risk that whatever it does is seen as a precedent, which makes it hard to go back to charging more for future versions if it offers heavy discounts, for example,” he explains.
And he does have a point here. Windows has always been available with a price, so offering customers a freeware version all of a sudden would completely change people’s perception of the world’s number one operating system.
If many users switch to the free version of Windows and then Microsoft asks them to pay for an update, it could actually cause more harm than good because some might refuse to update, while others could move to alternative operating systems.
Details about Microsoft’s new strategy for Windows 10 should be unveiled at the January 21 event next week, alongside new information concerning the changes that the company is expected to implement on other Windows-powered devices, including tablets and smartphones.