Pirated Windows users can also upgrade Windows 10 for free!

On March 18th, at the Windows Hardware Engineering Industry Innovation Summit (WinHEC) in Shenzhen, Terry Myerson, executive vice president of Microsoft's operating system division, announced that Windows 10 will be in the summer. 190 countries and regions around the world are officially released in 111 languages.

Under the pressure of Google and Apple, Microsoft's software business has embarked on a freemium model, in which Windows 10 announced that it will provide free upgrades within one year of its release. A few days ago, Microsoft officially confirmed that users of pirated Windows can also upgrade to Windows 10 for free.

According to the US technology news website "Connection", at a conference held in Shenzhen, China, Microsoft executives responsible for Windows operating system Mason announced more about Windows10 release time and upgrades. Details. According to Microsoft's new policy, users who install pirated Windows 7 and Windows 8 (without formal Microsoft software licenses) can also upgrade to Windows 10 for free.

The connection site pointed out that it is a surprising move to allow pirated users to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. On the one hand, Windows is still a very important source of income for Microsoft, and in the past, Microsoft has spared no effort to fight piracy around the world.

But after Nadella served as Microsoft CEO, many of Microsoft's business models have changed dramatically, including partial liberalization of Windows and Office software. Last year, Microsoft announced that mobile devices that are less than nine inches in size can get the operating system for free.

At the same time, consumer expectations for operating system software have changed dramatically. Since 2013, Apple has offered a free upgrade to the computer operating system MACOSX, and the iOS mobile operating system has been free for a long time. Apple can make up for the loss of operating system software revenue with new hardware revenue. Today, Microsoft also has a tablet and smartphone business, and the company is following Apple's operating system free strategy.

Google Inc. is slightly different. Its hardware sales are not large. Google’s Android system is free to open source to global smartphone makers. Google mainly generates revenue through mobile advertising and sales of Play Digital Content Mall. .

The connection website pointed out that on the Windows 10 operating system, Microsoft provides a free upgrade, but Microsoft will seek other sources of income to make up for the loss of the operating system.

At present, Microsoft has launched a series of cloud services, such as Office365, chat tool Skype, cloud storage service OneDrive, even if they do not pay for Windows 10 users, they can still buy Microsoft cloud services.

In addition, even if users do not purchase Microsoft's cloud services, they will stay in Microsoft's application ecosystem by using the Windows 10 operating system for free, using Windows applications from other companies.

In the previous quarter's earnings report, consumer-oriented software sales revenue (including operating systems and Office) accounted for 16% of Microsoft's total revenue, accounting for less than 23% a year ago.

For Microsoft, facing the eroding of Apple and Google (including smartphones and Chromebooks), getting free users is better than no users. In addition, those massive software installations of the old operating system will also bring security concerns to Microsoft. Computers that are not patched in time can easily become a hotbed of malware and viruses. At the same time, continuing to provide patches for legacy systems will be a costly burden for Microsoft.

Before, Microsoft has been calling on users who are still using the XP operating system and IE6 browser to upgrade to the new version of the software. However, in the Chinese market, there are still a large number of users using old software such as XP. In addition, some Chinese government policies on Windows 8 have also prevented the upgrade of the old operating system.

By offering a free upgrade, Microsoft will avoid some of the troubles caused by the old operating system. For some pirated software users, Microsoft's move will also be good news.

In fact, there is a view in the industry that since Microsoft has announced the limited free policy of Windows10, because there are still a large number of users still using XP operating system in China and the world, Microsoft should provide a kind of XP directly upgrades to Windows 10 for free, which will greatly increase the popularity of Windows 10.