Microsoft Touts New PCs, Windows Phones at Computex
At Computex in Taiwan on Wednesday, Microsoft touted the over 40 new Windows PC and Windows Phone handset designs showcased by its hardware partners at the show. As you might imagine, the devices vary wildly, with more hardware makers coming …
Context & Ripple Effects
Computex is the stage for a deliberate pivot in Microsoft's device strategy: two weeks earlier it announced Windows 8.1 with Bing specifically to help partners sell lower-cost hardware, and the show's 40-plus new PC and phone designs are the first visible output of that push.
The breadth matters because Microsoft's phone efforts have cycled through restarts before — its 2010 phone experiment and the 2012 relaunch of its phone efforts both promised partner momentum — so OEM Vice President Nick Parker's claim that Windows tablets and smartphones will dip below $200 this year is an attempt to show the ecosystem has finally reached competitive price points.
First-order effects
- Microsoft's OEM partners gain a high-profile showcase for more than 40 new designs, with Parker confirming sub-$200 Windows Mobile tablets and phones arriving within the year — directly lowering the entry price for buyers considering Windows hardware.
Second-order effects
- With prices pushed toward 'industry competitive' levels, hardware makers shift competition away from specs toward the wildly varied industrial designs on display, and low-cost Windows SKUs begin pressuring the margins of partners' own higher-priced PCs.
Third-order effects
- If the sub-$200 pattern holds, Microsoft's licensing economics tilt further toward volume over per-device revenue — consistent with the free-or-cheap Windows variants it began offering partners in 2014 — making Computex-scale device breadth the measure of Windows relevance rather than flagship hardware.
The trend: Microsoft is repositioning Windows from a premium licensed OS into a low-price, high-volume platform whose health is measured by how many cheap, diverse partner devices ship each cycle.