Friday, August 10, 2007

Is Microsoft Planning to Launch a Branded PC?


In his MarketWatch column, John C. Devorak strings together a few facts that involve the Xbox as a Microsoft testbed for new technologies, and the fact that an MS branded PC was actually rolled out in India already (with minimal publicity).
Could it be, he asks, that MS is heading the Apple way, of selling hardware AND software?
It makes a lot of sense and I can see how many businesses, already suffering from hardware malfunctions or incompatibilities with their Windows OS, would like the idea of having the hardware and software pre-tested and packaged together.
Now what would the US government would say about MS going into hardware? Time will tell...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Microsoft sw is just a small portion of what sw people run on their PCs. And most of the app incompatibilities are non-microsoft apps anyway. I don't see how this would fix that at all. And besides, MSFT has the opposite reputation of Apple so people would see it as MSFT imposing its monopoly again.

Traveling Tech Guy said...

Hey Doug,
You're absolutely right in your analysis. Sadly, MS just sees another market they can try to take over (i.e. Zune vs. iPod, or the more successful attempt, Xbox vs. Playstation). They don't realize you need a certain amount of "cool factor" to create the buzz the Mac hardware creates.
But, it being Microsoft, with $50bn in their coffers and an R&D budget bigger than most nations, they can afford to err on the first, second and third trial - and nail it on the fourth (I refer you to Internet Explorer vs Netscape, or as kids today call it "Netscape who?").