Skip to main content

Microsoft: Pay me $250 instead

If this article is accurate, Microsoft is paying Nokia almost $250 for every Windows phone that Nokia ships.  The payback, ostensibly, is twofold:
  1. Wide enough adoption that Microsoft becomes a player in mobile
  2. People, through usage, will stick to Microsoft services, and become long term customers.
I wonder if Microsoft could achieve both aims through a software-only play?  I imagine buying my new Android phone, and then installing "Windows Phone 8", the App, for which Microsoft will pay me $20/month for every month that I am an active user.  They can do that for 12 months for the same amount that they are paying to Nokia, so they have a full year to make me a believer in Microsoft solutions.

Of course, Google may react and try to shut down, or limit, such a practice.....but operators might endorse it.  More Microsoft services, more data usage.

The marketing tradeoff is straightforward: is it easier to get someone to download the Windows 8 App, or to purchase a Nokia phone?  With most of the planet sitting in front of a Windows OS, and using a Microsoft browser, they would seem to have a lot of leverage for promoting a software download.

Why won't Microsoft do this?  Because it implies that the OS is no longer important (the App would run on Android!).

Popular posts from this blog

Gliese 581g

So...there is probably intelligent life out there.  As the old Monty Python saying goes, "I hope so, cause there certainly isn't much here on earth."  Case in point.  The video for Gliese581g is on MSNBC, and works fine in IE, but crashes in Chrome [ here ].
Post a Comment
Read more

Acsoi - Land Grab Economics

"Adjusted Consolidated Segment Operating Income" ( Acsoi ), is a measure of what a companies profits would be if they were not spending like crazy to acquire a space:  in GroupOn's case, this would be retailers. To me, using Acsoi as a measure is really an admission that a company has no staying power beyond brand awareness.  So, they need to grab and own as much mindshare as they can, as quickly as they can, to increase the barrier to entry for competitors.  Without intellectual property to help protect them, and with the cost of switching (for a user) being effectively zero, building a global brand, and relying on brand stickiness, is the best way forward. Companies like Amazon that have been effective at this have also built in other "sticky" factors over time: recommendation engines, one-click purchasing, etc.  This increases the cost for the user to switch, and allows the company to stop pouring money into marketing and acquisition costs.  You also buil...
Post a Comment
Read more

Schrodinger's Cat is still Alive...and Dead

With Borders scaling back so many of their stores, I have ended up buying more books than I normally would. One I picked up is "What is Life?" by Ed Regis.  It is a good short read, although it is now 2 years old, which is a long time given the rate that "artificial life" is moving at.  Since the book came out, Craig Ventor claims to have created the first artificial life . One thing I did not know was that Schrodinger wrote a book with the same title in 1944 which predicted the existence of a DNA-like molecule;  Crick actually credits Schrodinger with inspiring some of his early work. Ed Regis points out that Schrodinger's book never actually defines what life is; that is left hanging.  Interestingly, I felt the same about Regis's book.  While he argues that life is defined by having an "embedded metabolism" that argument still seems weak.  Carl Sagan pointed out, many years ago, that cars have a metabolism, which is hard to argue against....
Post a Comment
Read more