Ed: Why Microsoft Won't Price Win7SE High
Microsoft never willingly gives up market share.
Last week we ran a story on how older Intel Atom-based netbooks may not be getting OEM-upgraded to Windows 7 due to cost issues.
The bigger issue at hand rather than which old netbooks will get Windows 7 is which new netbooks will get the OS.
A Windows XP license for netbooks currently costs OEMs around $25 to $30, (of which Microsoft makes a profit of $15). But according to Digitimes, Microsoft is asking $45 to $55 for the cheapest Windows 7 license, presumably Starter Edition, which will drive prices up in an already very price-sensitive segment and time in the economy.
Many media outlets took the above pricing estimates – which haven’t been confirmed by Microsoft – and are running stories that Windows 7 would be priced out of reach for budget netbooks. While it’s plausible that Microsoft will be charging more for Windows 7 licenses than it does currently for Windows XP, it’s unlikely that the world’s largest software maker would purposely bump itself out of every market. After all, is there any market that Microsoft isn’t interested in tapping into?
Furthermore, Microsoft has boasted on multiple occasions about how Windows now holds a 98 percent share of netbooks sold today. The netbook market started off with one that was dominated by Linux-based OSes, but Microsoft quickly took over in the span of a year. Microsoft simply isn’t going to let go of that market share, especially not in netbooks, the fastest growing the PC segment of 2008.
We’re going one-on-one with Microsoft on Wednesday morning to get a better understanding of the company’s strategy on netbooks and Windows. If there are any burning questions that you have on those topics, please let us know in the comments below and we’ll try to address them tomorrow.

Free? I take it your hatred for microsoft is blinding what sense you may have. Gotta love all the microsoft hate. Build a successful company, make a few bucks and all of the sudden you are the Super Devil.
XP will be gone
But Vista prices may go down
Screen size, resolution, maximum hardware specs and unable to change wallpaper/themes restrictions are inplace for starters!
I thought 7 was going to replace Vista? As in vista disappears and XP remains as a low end alternative for low end set-ups... like my dad's ^.^
I agree with you!
Free? I take it your hatred for microsoft is blinding what sense you may have. Gotta love all the microsoft hate. Build a successful company, make a few bucks and all of the sudden you are the Super Devil.
help presuade a company to go for it.
Why do you continue to buy food from the supermarket when every month they downsize the products and charge you the same, and in some cases more?
Vista will be gone too. What end-user would want to bother with Vista when Win7 is around? Remember, when vista came out - Retail/upgrade boxes of XP quickly disappeared. You can only buy XP-OEM versions now, until they run out of stock. Vista's market share will peak around Oct 2009 and go downhill from there.
I'm loving se7en x64 so far. But i have a huge doubt that i am going to buy it.