Knowledge@Wharton says the era of software in a box is over
Experts at Wharton say the January 30 launch of the consumer versions of Microsoft’s flagship software may be among the last of its kind — a product sold for a flat fee in a shrink-wrapped box. Indeed, many wonder if the software business model that has made Microsoft so dominant for the last 20 years may begin to fade in the decade to come as new software business models — from open source to advertising supported — gain increasing traction.
We are already seeing the music industry and movie industry tumbling down from their boxed offerings. It is their inability (or refusal) to adopt to the newer models that led to the decline in sales and increase in privacy. Music industry has realized this to some extent but they have a long way to go from their desperate attempt to hang on to the dying DRM. Movie industry and Media are in the intermediate turbulent state now and they will eventually fall in line. If Microsoft doesn’t change their playbook totally, they are bound to go the IBM way. If they continue to hang on to their claim that there will be another release of Windows in a box, the time is not far away when we will tell our children that “there lived a mammoth called Microsoft which went down into a big hole due to its own weight….”. We have to wait and see how they are going to evolve their strategy.
