14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is currently cooking what it refers to as the next must have free upgrade for the Windows platform, targeting specifically Windows Vista and Windows XP. The announcement came from Kevin Johnson, Microsoft President, Platforms and Services Division during his address at the Financial Analyst Meeting 2007. And in Johnson's perspective, the product designed to act as an upgrade to the Windows experience is formed by nothing more than the cumulated services and solutions bundled under the Windows Live brand umbrella. Windows users should look to the beta testing release of the upcoming Windows Live release later this summer.
"This next release of Windows Live is the must-have free upgrade to the Windows experience. And so we're going to drive very hard on continuing to expand the number of users we have using these Windows Live services. Let me give you some perspective. We're at 380 million Live IDs. We're getting ready to release this next release of Windows Live in the fall. Yahoo is about 245 million active registered users; Google has approximately 75 million signed-in users," Johnson stated explaining that "a Live ID in our terminology is a user that signs in and uses one or more of our services every 30 days."
The combination between Windows Live and the Windows desktop client is an integer part of the Redmond company's business vision of Software plus Services. Microsoft focuses on delivering Windows Live as an extension of Windows, and for the moment, this means Vista and XP. In this manner, via the Windows operating system, users will be directed to the online suite of services and solutions.
And in the end it all comes down to "breadth of usage," eyeballs making up the audience for Microsoft's online advertising business. In this sense, the company is preparing the beta launch of a single installer for the Windows Live suite in the coming months. Through the unified installation experience, Windows Live will achieve the next level of integration with the client platform.
"Our ability as a company to better connect to the Windows experiences such as mail, Photo Gallery, as well as the experience on the phone and extend those into services experiences, I think, will enable us to expand Live IDs and really grow our reach in the network. So that's one key priority our engineering teams are focused on, our marketing teams, our field teams. "