Windows Starter Editions for "Emerging Markets"

This morning while driving to work, I was listening to Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott’s TWiT podcast  – Windows Weekly. (A must listen for people interested in Microsoft technologies.) The topic under discussion was the various versions of Windows 7 Operating Systems – in particular, the “Home Basic” or the “Starter” edition of Windows 7 planned for the politically correct “Emerging Nations”, which in plain English denotes the group of third world nations including India/China.

 

The so called “Starter” edition is a heavily stripped down Windows – No Aero, no gloss, only three applications running at a time. It is supposed to be the poor man’s window to the world. While I appreciate this nice gesture of Microsoft to serve the poor and the needy – I would like to see some statistics on how many Vista Starter editions it has sold till now in these “emerging markets”. Let us talk India since I am an Indian and I stay in India. I have traveled well – from the tech savvy Metros to the What-Is-A-Computer parts of India. I have used various computers. These computers have either a pirated version of Windows XP Home/Vista Home Premium operating system or simply Ubuntu. I am yet to come across a Windows Vista Starter edition.

 

Piracy is rampant in this part of the world. It is a menace that Microsoft is trying to tackle in a wrong way. The solution lies in making the software affordable to the common public of India – not in offering a skeleton of the OS and charging for it. People would simply buy the pirated version (Available at 2 $ - Any software) or load Ubuntu. If Windows Vista were available today for say – 50$ instead of the insane 150$ (for the premium version), the revenue Microsoft gets from these third world nations will be far more than what they are getting from the sales of Windows Vista Starter – which I believe is a big zero. The key is in differential pricing – not differential features.

 

I am not advocating piracy here. Please don’t get me wrong. I am one of the very few legal owners of Windows Vista Home Premium operating system in India. I am just amazed by the lack of business acumen demonstrated by these big corporates. They have consistently failed to read the Third World script and they haven’t learnt from their mistakes till now. I reiterate – fight piracy and boost your revenues by lowering the prices – not by stripping down the features. It just doesn’t work that way.

 

By the way – you can follow Leo Laporte’s TWiT podcasts on www.twit.tv