General lack of interest for the new product

Jun 23, 2005 11:34 GMT  ·  By

It looks like Microsoft can't every legal battle. As you probably know, following the long antitrust lawsuit filed against the American company by the EU, Microsoft had to launch a new product, called Windows XP N, which doesn't contain the Windows Media Player component.

However, it seems that the computer manufacturers and distributors are not interested in such a product, many stores having no intentions of storing it. This is also due to the fact that, although it's an inferior product, the Windows XP N will have the same retail price as the usual version.

"We'll continue to sell the old version because it's obviously better value for our customers," said Gina Jones, spokeswoman for PC World, the most important PC retailer in UK.

The same opinion is shared by the major PC manufacturers. Thus, Toshiba, Sony and Dell will not install the new product on their systems, because, as Liem Nguyen, a spokesman for Dell, said, "From our experience, customers purchasing computers expect them to come equipped with the capability of playing back digital media files,".

We have made these products available to our standard distribution channels, as the EU commission outlined. Now its up to computer manufacturers, distributors and customers to decide whether to order the product," said Derek Delmartino, spokesman for Microsoft in Brussels, then adding that the first results regarding the sales won't be available for at least a month.