14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 10 will see the light of day on July 29 and it will be offered free of charge to those running Windows 7 and 8.1 on their computers and who decide to upgrade during the first year after launch.
It’s no surprise that Microsoft expects Windows 10 adoption to skyrocket in the short term, and the company has even made a prediction, forecasting that around 1 billion devices would be running Windows 10 by 2017.
Warwick Grey, Microsoft New Zealand senior partner sales executive for distribution, explains that users who will upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and benefit from the free upgrade offer will make the new operating system stellar, comparing it to Windows 98, Vista, and 8, all of which failed to stir up interest after launch.
“There are reasons why partners should be using this as an opportunity to enagage with customers around their strategies around the four big pillars [of mobile, cloud, social and big data],” he is quoted as saying by ChannelLife.
“All of these things lead to a lot more discussions than just Windows. We hope it will be a platform for many, many discussions to be had.”
Different strategy
Indeed, Microsoft has more reasons to hope that Windows 10 will succeed as far as the number of upgrades that could be performed after launch is concerned.
When Windows 8 launched in October 2012, Microsoft only offered discounts for those who upgraded from previous Windows versions, whereas for Windows 10 the company is making the upgrade free of charge.
And for Windows 8, Redmond has often denied that its new operating system was a flop and tried to convince everyone that it was selling well, despite the market share statistics that were living proof that users refused to upgrade.
Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 have a combined market share of around 12 percent these days, nearly two and a half years after the launch of the core OS, so it’s pretty clear that Microsoft needed a new approach for Windows 10.
Time will tell if Microsoft plays its card right this time, but judging by the existing interest in Windows 10, the new operating system has all the chances in the world to succeed.