If the leaked prices are accurate and Baker is right about the three-app limit, Windows revenues may slip again. “Microsoft has said that Windows 7 runs pretty well on netbooks,” he said, and if users take the company at its word, they may not feel the need to upgrade from Starter. The lifting of the three-application limit means fewer Windows 7 Starter users will be motivated to upgrade to Home Premium, Baker said.
Before it changed its mind on the Starter restriction, Microsoft had been broadly blasted by users and bloggers. In late May, Microsoft backed away from the limitation, which would have blocked users from running more than three applications simultaneously. Netbooks sell for between US$200 and US$500, making the $85 upgrade an extra expense of between 16 per cent and 40 per cent of the original purchase price of the PC.Īnother factor adding to upgrade reluctance, said Baker, is Microsoft’s decision to drop the three-application limit it once baked into Windows 7 Starter. If people are buying cheap they’re buying cheap for a reason.” “At those prices, there won’t be many opportunities to trade up. “Microsoft needs to be more aggressive,” said Baker. That’s too much, said Stephen Baker, an analyst with the NPD Group. The average of US$85.42 represented 71 per cent of the retail price of Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade, a license for upgrading Windows XP or Vista to the new OS.
Several online resellers recently leaked prices of Windows 7’s Anytime Upgrade from Starter, the version designed for netbooks, to Home Premium, the edition destined for most consumer desktops and notebooks.Īnytime Upgrade prices as leaked by four resellers - eCost, Fadfusion, PC Nation and PC Mall - ranged from US$89.98 to US$80.99. One route: the built-in Anytime Upgrade, a feature that lets users move up to a more feature-filled edition by plunking down cash for an unlocking code.īut Anytime Upgrade prices may be anything but cheap. Previously, analaysts have speculated that Microsoft will try to move users of Windows 7-powered netbooks to a more expensive version as a way to squeeze revenue out of its next operating system. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) may find it tough to convince netbook users running the low-end Windows 7 Starter to later upgrade to a more expensive edition, a retail market analyst said Saturday.
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