Ok, I was wondering if/when Microsoft is going to release a new Operating System. I high doubt it will be called Windows 11 or whatever. I have read on a few sites that it would just be called "Windows". Does anyone know if that is in the makings and when it would be released if it's going to?
I think from what I've read Microsoft's idea is that eventually Windows 10 will become just Windows and will have new features added twice yearly which will extend the lifetime of Windows.
Personally I don't see how a company that makes most of it's revenue from the operating system will be able to maintain this model, unless eventually you would need to pay a licence fee to use a newly released feature set.
That could work if the Windows build itself did not change, just to use new features you need to pay to unlock them, maybe a lower price than a full OS licence.
Or they might move to a subscription model and eventually a cloud based OS, where you only pay for the features you want and the client side is a thin client.
All this just my musings based on other peoples ideas.
MS have said that Windows 10 would not be replaced, that it would continue indefinitely and that updates to it would always be free.
MS have also said that one day nobody would need to use the suffix 10 and that the OS could just be referred to as Windows. Given that even XP is still in use it is likely to be at least a decade before the suffix can be dropped without prompting a request for clarification.
MS will make most of its money in the same way that it does now by selling the OS to computer manufacturers and by selling tech support to large companies. They have dropped out of consumer support except for warranty services and even that is outsourced.
Denis
About the "subscription thing" - there is absolutely no reason to expect this. The whole idea is pure speculation that is both without any basis and contrary to MS public statements issued when Windows 10 was released.
Denis
Not to forget that Azure cloud services is a big money-maker for M$.
Are you saying that I, Joe SixPack, call MS with a problem about my Windows 10 Pro, that I'm talking with an employee of some outsource support company, and not a Microsoftie?
They have dropped out of consumer support except for warranty services and even that is outsourced.
Denis
Microsoft had about 110 billion in revenue in fiscal 2018, divided into 3 business segments:
Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing.
Revenue in 2018 for those 3 segments was 36 billion, 32 billion, and 42 billion, respectively.
Windows is a part of the “More Personal Computing” segment. This includes Windows OEM licensing.
But “More Personal Computing” also contains Devices, Gaming, and Search…..including Xbox, Surface, PC accessories, Bing advertising, etc.
Windows overall revenue was up by 5% in 2018, to roughly 20 billion---which is under 20% of total Microsoft revenue.
But Gaming, Search, and Surface were all up more than 10%, so Windows appears to be a declining percentage of total revenue within the “More Personal Computing” segment.
And, as you might expect, “More Personal Computing” is growing at a slower rate than the other 2 primary segments.
MS already has. O365, Business services, Office is a huge user base between multiple platforms. Without Microsoft and the injection of millions into Apple to help Jobs recover it for Office to be sold for Apple’s desktops, Microsoft would have been the ONLY game in town from the time Apple would have failed.
I use an iPad Pro ALL of the time. The desktop that runs Windows 10 in our household barely gets used. If need to do something that the iPad cannot do, I grab the Macbook running MacOS Mojave. All three have O365 on. them with a business subscription for Office. There are various reasons to use a certain platform and that is by the end user’s choice not some company pushing somehing.
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