Microsoft to sell PCs in India

Post #288,030 by JayMehaffey 6/28/07 5:05:31 PM Reply	Microsoft to sell PCs in India [link\|http://origin.arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070627-microsoft-testing-pc-sales-in-india.html\|Arstechnica] Microsoft will begin selling PCs in India next month as part of its "Unlimited Potential" program, an event that will mark the software giant's first entry into the PC sales business. Dubbed the IQ PC, the machines will cost RS21,000 (about $525), are manufactured in partnership with Zenith, and will sport AMD Athlon CPUs. Aimed primarily at students, the desktop PCs will initially be made available in a limited number of retail outlets in Pune and Bangalore. After a three-month trial, the program will be expanded if sales are strong enough to warrant it. Just a trial program, but if this takes off it will radically change the industry. It will give the other box resellers a better reason to support Linux while giving MS a bigger hand in hardware standards. Personally I think it is a bad idea in the long run for MS, which has built part of it's empire on hardware neutrality. If they assemble their own PCs, or even resell others PCs, it will be much harder to maintain their neutrality. And given the way MS works they will quickly fall into the trap of providing some special OS features that work only on their hardware. It might help them for 1 quarter, but it will give every other hardware company a strong incentive to jump ship. Jay
Post #288,033 by Another Scott 6/28/07 5:20:20 PM Reply	It looks like the usual Microsoft flailing about. As the article mentions, it seems to be a response to the [link\|http://www.laptop.org/\|One Laptop Per Child] initiative. But rather than a laptop, it's a desktop that costs about as much as an XBox 360. It's not cheap enough to compete with OLPC but it's too expensive to compete with Linux PCs. As a brand, it seems to compete with the XBox 360 but doesn't have comparable horsepower for gaming. XPSE isn't going to appeal to those who are probably often running pirated copies of full versions of Windows now. It really looks like another distraction for Microsoft. I don't think the PC hardware manufactures are very worried at this point, but I'm sure they're keeping an eye on it. PC vendors have known that MS was coming after their business ever since the original XBox was released. Cheers, Scott.
Post #288,036 by a6l6e6x 6/28/07 6:51:55 PM Reply	Competing with your customers is bad idea for MSFT. It will only piss off the PC manufacturers and get them to sell PCs with an alternate OS. MSFT will lose more money on OS sales than they will earn on PCs. Do you remember when Pepsi owned Kentucky Cried Chicken, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut? No other fast food chain would buy and serve Pepsi. Pepsi spun off their fast food chains as a separate unaffiliated company now known as Yum! Brands Inc. Perhaps Microsoft is getting ready to break itself up into parts. Alex When fascism comes to America, it'll be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross. -- Sinclair Lewis

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