Tony
Sun Mar 02 13:01:36 PST 2008
nospam wrote:
> Vista prices cut by as much as 48%, but not in U.S.
> Prices for the OS will be trimmed 15% to 20% in the U.S.
> By Gregg Keizer
>
>
> February 29, 2008 (Computerworld) Microsoft Corp. is cutting the retail
> price of its Windows Vista operating system by as much as 20% in the U.S.,
> but will slash at least some versions' price tags by more than 46% in both
> the U.K. and the European Union, the company confirmed today.
>
> Late Thursday, Microsoft announced sweeping price cuts to boxed copies of
> Vista, saying then that the cuts would range from as low as 3% in developed
> countries to nearly 50% for some editions sold in poorer nations.
>
> But by the numbers that Microsoft released today, even customers in Western
> Europe ? France, Germany, Spain and the U.K., among others ? will also see
> prices fall by nearly half.
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Thanks, Microsoft. I won't be buying Vista anytime soon; with 3% price cut
> you can keep it. Thanks
There was a longer piece on this recently in the NY Times:
February 29, 2008, 12:02 pm
Vista?s Price Falls; How Long Before Yahoo?s Price Rises?
By Saul Hansell
If you want to understand Microsoft?s motivation for buying Yahoo, look
at the price cuts announced today for Windows Vista. (Stay with me on this.)
The price cuts for boxed copies of Vista are especially big in
developing countries, where users will be able to buy full versions of
the operating system for the price they would have paid for an upgrade.
(The better to prevent piracy, Microsoft says.)
In the United States, the main difference will be with the Premium
edition (now $129 instead of $159) and the Ultimate ($219, down from $299).
Microsoft says the cuts are meant to lift sales in retail stores, a
small segment of the Windows market. The vast majority of operating
systems, of course, are sold bundled with computers.
Microsoft?s many critics are gloating that this shows Vista shipped with
far more bugs than features.
No matter how good Vista may be, there is another force at work here:
The price people are willing to pay for software is coming down.
A software package ? even an operating system ? seems out of whack at
$299 or even $159, when there is so much that can now be done free over
the Web or through free downloads like iTunes and Google?s Picasa. Those
prices also don?t really jibe with the cost of personal computers, which
now start at $500.
Microsoft itself has already confronted this by creating the ?Student
and Teacher? version of Office. Now you can buy Word, Excel and
PowerPoint (not Outlook) for $129 (plus whatever guilt you feel as you
justify the purchase by saying that your spinning class at the gym makes
you a student).
One look at Microsoft?s high profit margins certainly raises questions
about how long this business model can continue before someone creates a
more efficient model. The combination of the open source movement, the
Web, and the advertising-supported software model epitomized by Google
are starting to have the long-predicted effect.
So while the prices Microsoft can charge for its boxed software may be
falling, the price it will pay for its own Web software and advertising
play ? Yahoo ? is likely to rise.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/vistas-price-falls-how-long-before-yahoos-price-rises/index.html?ref=technology