Microsoft's Windows 10 launch: a boost for sales?

Justine Underhill
·Reporter

Microsoft (MSFT) announced its new Windows 10 platform would be released on July 29th, the first major update to its operating system in three years.

The tech giant will offer free upgrades for users with Windows 7 or 8.1 devices. According to Microsoft, the new operating system will run apps faster, enhance security, and increase battery life for laptops. The system will also reintroduce the Start menu, which was removed in Windows 8, and replace Internet Explorer with the new Edge browser.

Microsoft's last major update to Windows 8 was deemed a "disaster," as many users considered it to be difficult and not intuitive. The company notes that Windows 10 will showcase more gradual changes than pervious updates.

“This is not one of these new look and feel type upgrades that all of a sudden is going to have people jarred by the different ways they have to interact with their devices,” says Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Michael Santoli. “I don't think we can see many obvious negatives coming out of this. It could only really be a help to make it a little more of a frictionless system to work with Windows products.”

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Microsoft plans to provide the update to users in 190 countries, across a wide range of devices, from Windows phones to the Xbox One.

“One of the significant things about Windows 10 is that it's the first operating system that Microsoft is putting out that's supposed to span different devices PCs, tablets, and phones," Santoli says. "So the idea is this makes it more attractive for developers to come up with new applications for the Windows platform."

Santoli adds that he doesn’t expect the new operating system to provide an immediate boost to Microsoft's sales.

“I don't really think that we're looking for IT managers to start ramping up their spending on PCs just because there's a new operating system," he says. "Microsoft is offering this as a free upgrade to some existing users of PCs, so it seems like it's not so much an immediate money maker as it is trying to make sure that the Windows operating system remains relevant.”