Tuesday, March 4, 2014

The price war...

Vishal Tripathi, an analyst at Gartner reportedly believes that the Windows brand still resonates with people. “If people have an option to get a Windows tablet at price that is similar to an Android tablet, they will likely pick it. A low-cost Windows tablet is not going to shake the market but it will help Microsoft gain some consumers who will otherwise go to Android,” he said.
http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/microsoft-releasing-rs-10000-windows-tablets-mid-year-take-android-219367.html

Well, I do not agree to that. Free is FREE. 15 != 0. But, the fact that is really going to go against them is that, people will not pick windows just because there is an option! If that was the case, they should have already been picking up windows mobiles from Nokia. But, they are not doing it!

Reason? Customers have gone more tech savy and they understand what they are getting. They spent 80% of their time in apps. MS has a store with 10^5 apps or a little more. On Android, they have about 10^6 apps. About 10 times more!

Of course,  people have not forgotten name of MS yet. But, they are more familiar with the name of Android when it comes to phones and tablets. The killer apps on any MS OS are office apps. If they are not going to play that trump card by making office dirt cheap, it will be difficult to make people forget about Android.

Again, in past we have seen Amazon, Nokia etc forking Android. Can it happen in case of any MS OS?

So, the bottom line is, MS cannot win by simply reducing the price of OS. They have to catch up on apps, reduce the cost of office suite and learn from Android about how to force your bitter most enemy to come to you for this survival and then help him to survive :) The last point lets you survive in a fiercely competitive market irrespective of whether you win or your opponent wins eventually. Last at least is something that MS can never do. They are good at closing windows to people, but Android has none to close. 

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