14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 10 will hit the market later this year and will be offered as a free upgrade within the first year of availability, but Microsoft has prepared a little surprise for those living in China.
According to Terry Myerson, head of the Microsoft operating system unit, Windows 10 will be offered free of charge for "all qualified PCs, genuine and non-genuine," as he said in an interview with Reuters.
Basically, the software giant is planning to bring genuine Windows on as many PCs as possible, especially because piracy levels in China continue to be extremely high.
As we reported to you earlier today, Microsoft signed deals with several Chinese companies to bring Windows 10 to more customers in the country, but offering the new operating system free of charge to those running a pirated copy of its operating system is definitely a big change for the Redmond giant.
PC sales to be significantly increased
One of the reasons Microsoft might be trying to offer Windows 10 free of charge is that such a promo would boost new PC sales in the country and thus help the company lower the market share of older operating systems, such as Windows XP and Vista.
Right now, Windows XP is still running on plenty of computers in China, but most users refuse to upgrade because a newer operating system would require expensive hardware upgrades. What's more, Windows XP and Windows 7 are two of the most pirated operating systems in China, so offering Windows 10 at absolutely no cost would help Microsoft reduce the number of non-genuine OSes in the country.
Windows 10 is projected to be released in the second half of 2015 and the operating system will be free of charge for everyone, but for markets besides China it will only be available at no cost on genuine Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 computers.