In a post on Microsoft’s blog the company’s VP for Windows, Tony Prophet, yesterday laid out the final line up of the upcoming Windows 10 software.
As previously, Microsoft have decided to spoil the market with choice, offering Home, Pro, Enterprise and Education versions of the operating system along with two different versions of the mobile package and a stripped down product for Internet of Things devices.
In many respects this is Microsoft desperately holding onto the old model of operating systems where a consumer version bundled into a commodity PC offered less than an Enterprise version supplied as part of a lucrative corporate license.
That model still works – Microsoft’s licensing revenue was $19 billion last year – although it is in slow decline although the problem is operating systems are now commoditised and the old position of dominance in the PC industry doesn’t work in a world of cheap, lightweight devices interacting with cloud based services.
One theory running around the tech industry at the moment is that Windows 10 will be the last Microsoft operating system, if that’s true then today’s seven flavours of the software is the last grab at the old licensing model.