Historically Apple (remember Apple from 1985 to 2001) has been a severely under performing company, in the last 10 years they've made boatloads of cash by optim

Historically Apple (remember Apple from 1985 to 2001) has been a severely under performing company, in the last 10 years they've made boatloads of cash by optimizing their supply chain and extracting huge volume discounts on the latest technology. Microsoft needs to figure out how to get its hardware and its OEMs hardware prices inline with Apple. If MS and their OEMs put pressure on manufacturers they'll no longer be able to offer the same discounts to Apple. OEMs, VARs, volume licensing holders already pay close to this price for windows and make up the bulk of purchases. Making Windows available to retail at ~$40 will not have a significant impact on revenue. Not dealing with Apple's competitive prices on phones and tablets will spell death for MS. MS at this point could give a shit about cannibalizing Windows retail upgrades for desktop operating systems. The key is to leverage their desktop OS, developer base and corporate relations into something thats competitive in mobile and tablets.