In a bid to attract mobile manufactures to use Windows on their devices, Microsoft announced it was waiving the license fee on the operating system at its annual developer's conference on Wednesday.
Microsoft has been charging manufactures between $5 and $15 for using Windows--until now, Reuters reported. Windows will remain free for manufactures of smartphones and tablets under nine inches in size. According to Reuters, Microsoft's market share last year stood at 3 percent, far behind Google's Android and Apple iOS.
"That model (paying for software) has been obliterated in the past few years by the fast adoption of Google's Android system for phones and tablets, which hardware makers quickly embraced and now accounts for more than 75 percent of all smartphones sold last year. Apple Inc's iPhone and iPad account for most of the rest of the mobile computing market," according to Reuters.
At the conference, Microsoft announced universal Windows apps, according to PC Magazine. The move to waive off license fees will get developers interested in developing apps for Windows.
According to a blog post: "Since universal Windows apps run on the same Windows runtime, developers have a common way of building and architecting apps for phones, tablets and PCs; from how they handle suspend and resume and do background processing to the way they manage in-app security."
It was earlier reported Microsoft had waived off license fees for two Indian manufacturers to capture a substantial market share in India. Its decision to extend this to all manufacturers is a significant change in the way the organization once operated under former CEO Steve Ballmer.
"Our vision, simply put, is to thrive in this world of mobile first, cloud first. Our goal is to really build platforms, create the best end-user experiences, the best developer opportunities and IT infrastructure for this ubiquitous computing world" IBN Live quoted Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella saying at the conference.
