Why Microsoft is winning

Global Market

The only thing in my opinion that is a clear threat today for Microsoft is the global market. Countries like China, India, Russia and Brazil are going to play an important role in the expansion of the global IT market in the coming years. Even if Microsoft manages to hold on to their current marketshare, if new users in the countries I mentioned earlier are going to be choosing Linux based products, Microsoft may find that soon Linux may have a much bigger marketshare than Windows. This is a serious problem Microsoft needs to address.
The fight between Windows and Linux is not going to be one of which OS is more stable or which OS has better security in the future, but rather it will be one of which OS delivers the most features for the least amount of money. Households in those countries cannot afford to pay more than $200 for an OS alone. But I can assure you they will want all the features they can get. The way Microsoft is currently trying to address this problem in my opinion is wrong. Windows XP Starter Edition which is developed specifically for those countries contains too many limitations to be attractive enough.
Let’s look at a young 18 year old guy named Pedro in Brazil. While Pedro’s mom may be satisfied with a 800 x 600 resolution and being able to run just 3 programs at once, I seriously doubt Pedro will want to own a computer where he is limited by the OS. Especially since there are attractive alternatives like Linspire available for just a little more than the price of Windows XP Starter Edition, and other Linux distributions which are completely free. What is going to happen is that Pedro is going to reinstall his PC and install some version of Linux where he is able to do anything he wants. And Pedro is a smart guy, soon he will want to experiment with building his own software. So what do you think will happen? That’s right, Pedro is going to download some free Linux development tools and is going to start developing Linux applications. And together with Pedro will be thousands of other young individuals. Soon Pedro will even reinstall his mom’s PC and teach her how to use Linux applications to browse the web and check her email. And Pedro will be recommending Linux to everyone. It is going to be far worse when schools and universities in those countries decide to use some distribution of Linux in their computer classes because they can’t work with the limitations in XP Starter Edition. Everything Pedro and his friends are going to be learning at school, they will want to do at home, and I suspect XP Starter Edition is going to have to make room for a Linux distribution.

I think the danger to Microsoft is clear. I know that if I was in the situation where I had to choose between Windows XP Starter Edition and Linspire, I would have chosen for Linspire or any other free Linux distribution for that matter. And this is why I think Microsoft’s current approach with Windows XP Starter Edition is not a good one. For example, if where I live now copyright laws would start being enforced and everyone would be required to buy a Windows XP and Office license with their computers, the price of a computer would go from around $700 to $1200 or more. The result would be that Linspire would get preinstalled on PC’s mighty fast over here.