Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft has given a verbal assurance to OEM’s that even while Microsoft releases its own tablet, Surface (which runs on the Windows 8 platform), the OEM’s are free to release and sell tablets or laptops that run on the same OS.
On July 9th, in front of over sixteen thousand partners in Microsoft, Ballmer announced that the Surface tablet would be a single design point, a small one in the broader ecosystem of Windows products. It would not affect the partnership with other companies whose products run on Windows 8. The decision to integrate the OS into Microsoft’s own tablet looks on the surface to be an undercutting for other OEM’s like Dell, Hewlett Packard, Acer and others. These companies have released products which use licensed Microsoft software. Chief Financial Officer of the Windows division of Microsoft, Tami Reller has produced designs of products developed by Lenovo, Samsung, HP and Asus that would use the Windows 8 platform.
By the first week of August, Windows 8 would be released to manufacturers, who would be able to integrate the software onto their products. In October, the general population would be able to upgrade their Windows 7 devices to Windows 8. President of the Microsoft Office division, Kurt DelBene has also announced an incentive program for Office365. This is the Office software suite for productivity that was introduced via the cloud a year ago.
The new Office365 Open program allows partners to bill the clients directly for the Office365 software, thus increasing their profits. The partners can add their own services to the Office365 suite and offer it to the clients. Also, partners who sell more than 150 seats on this cloud service are eligible for more revenues. The social media baron, Yammer has also been acquired by Microsoft and has been added to the Office division, at a cost of 1.2 billion dollars. This will allow employees of different companies to link up their Outlook, Exchange, Lync and Yammer services. This however, will only be possible once many security measures have been implemented to Yammer to protect the privacy of the employee. Microsoft can look ahead to better days as they intend to collaborate with Xbox to introduce an internet browser to the gaming systems.
Also, there will be a new Bing Search which will incorporate social media results as well. The partners of Microsoft have made combined earnings of over 690 billion dollars, a thirteen percent increase from the previous year.
