Microsoft aims to double user base with $3 Windows and Office

By Stan Beer, ITWire

Thursday, 19 April 2007

Microsoft has launched an effort to double its user base to 2 billion by 2015, offering students in developing countries entry level versions of Windows and Office for next to nothing. It's also an effort to keep users in poorer nations hooked on Windows and away from Linux.

According to Microsoft, its Student Innovation Suite will be an affordable and reliable software package for governments who buy and give free Windows-based PCs to primary and secondary students for their personal use at home and for schoolwork.

The Microsoft suite, which will be sold to qualifying governments for US$3, includes Windows XP Starter Edition, Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, Microsoft Math 3.0, Learning Essentials 2.0 for Microsoft Office, and Windows Live Mail desktop.

Interestingly, the package, which will be be offered in the second half of 2007, includes Windows XP instead of Vista, suggesting that it is aimed at lowly configured and perhaps recycled computers.

Microsoft, which has a massive piracy problem in developing countries, is caught between a rock and a hard place in poorer nations. Most consumers cannot afford its premium priced software and the only way to access Microsoft products is to buy cheap pirated copies. The problem for Microsoft is if it cracks down too hard on piracy in poor countries it risks pushing consumers into the arms of open source alternatives such as Linux.

With an eye on low cost Linux-based initiatives, such as the One Laptop Per Child program, Microsoft is attempting to tap into a view from some humanitarian organizations such as FAIR that putting recycled PCs from the first world to use in developing countries makes more sense than selling them cheap new Linux boxes.

The last thing Microsoft wants to see is a Linux third world. Therefore, since most recycled PCs will be Windows machines running XP, it is in Microsoft's interests to persuade cash poor governments to buy cheap recycled PCs which will be capable of running its US$3 software.