This guy claims that the purchase of Nokia by Microsoft signals the end of Windows. He says that Microsoft will go more for the Apple model and supply their own hardware and OS on it’s machines, and not make it available for end users to install on any machine. Sure, Apple succeeded in that realm, but Microsoft became #1 for allowing Windows to be put on any compatible machine. For the phone business? Sure, I can understand a single Windows Phone 8 device from Microsoft (although, I’d really like some options in hardware), but never on the desktop or tablet. If I cannot build my own PC and throw Windows on it, I won’t. I just can’t see it happening at all on the desktop.
He does focus on the phone market in his article, and I can see that as a possibility. Not the best idea that Microsoft has had lately, though. I’d use a Microsoft branded phone, though (of course, it’d be Nokia inside).
But software, Gates saw, was a different story. Software had a face. Software imprinted itself on users—once you learned one Windows PC, you understood every Windows PC. Unlike hardware, software enabled network effects: The more people who used Windows, the more attractive it became to developers, which meant more apps to make Windows computers more useful, which led to more users, and on and on. Finally, software was wildly, almost unimaginably profitable. After writing code once, you could copy it endlessly, at no marginal cost, for years to come—and make money on every single copy you sold.
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