new marketing strategy for microsoft ?

[eyesofra]

"If they're going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else." -- Microsoft Business Group President Jeff Raikes

new concept or they're just tryin to be the nice guys....

[Bfowler]

well in that case...im happy to oblige!


according to some news site (forgot which one)

as of about a month ago, only 400 copies of vista had been sold in china....interesting..

[eyesofra]

interesting indeed fowler.....

[fuzzysnuggleduck]

Microsoft likes to have people use their software. It's about market dominance.

Sure, they also like people to pay for their software but it's not average users that make the cash for MS, it's business.

[Francious70]

It's called

Volume Licencing

[stipud]

How do you think Microsoft got popular in the first place?

MS Office was a direct competitor of Lotus Notes, which was much more powerful at the time. The reason Microsoft won the battle was because they made it easy to pirate, whereas Lotus tried to stop it instead.

Microsoft acts under the banner of anti-piracy but it's one of the main reasons they're so popular.

[eyesofra]

true....
keeping an eye closed on piracy was and is still one of their strategies ...

its like a long tem investment for them...they make ppl get so used with MS product that one fine when its becomes difficult to find pirated copies, consumers have no choice but to buy ori softwares cause they're so used to it...

As fuzzy stated , they are more strict on licensing with the business users than the home users...that's how it is back here at the moment...

that being said, i just purchased my copy of ofice 2007 enterprise today and i'm just a home user....

[HoseHead]

"If they're going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else." -- Microsoft Business Group President Jeff Raikes

new concept or they're just tryin to be the nice guys....

Sheer numbers. The number of PC's running Bill's software is unfathomable. MS understands that fighting piracy is a lost venture with relatively nil return on their Software Nazi activities. If someone has a pirate edition of one of their applications, perhaps they may actually purchase another application. That's millions. It's the "if you're gonna swipe it, swipe mine" marketing strategy. Few corporations can afford to use this method.


I used to have access to every MS application made. Corporate license allowed a copy on a personal PC as long as a licensed copy was running on that person's desktop. When I retired and started my own business, software startup costs were about $5K. It's a depreciative write-off, but I have to have legitimate licensed copies to be legal. It has to be MS or you can't do business, especially with the Government.

HH