3 ms·
> they charge a licence (I think around 300€) Pretty interesting if Microsoft can charge €300 for an operating system that ships on €150 (£150/$199 or less) la
by scholia 10y ago
> they charge a licence (I think around 300€)
Pretty interesting if Microsoft can charge €300 for an operating system that ships on €150 (£150/$199 or less) laptops ;-)
The Windows installation fee used to be around $42-$44 and some versions cost around $11-15 (Windows XP Ultra Low Cost PC version). IBM used to pay $27 (which we know because it complained bitterly about Microsoft tripling the price).
The tablet version of Windows 8.1 cost $10 but OEMs got a $10 kickback for making Bing the default search engine. (Microsoft did not describe this as free, it said it was "zero paid".)
Be nice to have a current figure if anyone wants to break the non-disclosure clause, but the fee for Windows is a lot closer to €30 than it is to €300.
OEMs also charge software houses to distribute software (ie crapware). This can reduce the cost of Windows to the user almost to zero. In fact, when users subscribe to a pre-installed AV product, the OEM gets recurring fees which means the pre-installed Windows has actually generated a profit.
- kolme 10y agoYou are right. I was thinking of the price you get when you buy it off the shelf (which is also now cheaper as it used to be).
- scholia 10y agoYes, the off-the-shelf package includes a large fee for Microsoft support, and the right to move the OS from one machine to another. You don't get either of those with the OEM versions. One obvious factor in the fall of Windows pricing is the fall of PC prices. Microsoft could charge a lot when PCs cost $/€/£2,500 each. As PC prices fell through $/€/£1,500 each and $/€/£500 each to today's levels, the cost of Windows would have been an increasingly large proportion of the total. That was bound to be unsustainable, so I imagine (without any proof) that the price of Windows has come down much like the cost of hard drives and screens....
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]