Microsoft is pushing its products towards consumers and seems to be giving Acer, Samsung and Sony a head start in its advertising for Windows 8.
Looking at the first wave of adverts which have just been released, some of Microsoft’s traditional partners do not appear to be getting a look in.
Although Lenovo and HP are in the adverts you have to be careful about blinking or you will not spot them. Dell machines do not feature in any of the early adverts we have seen.
This means that Acer, Samsung and Sony are getting the most mileage from the free adverts and this will lead many to wonder if Microsoft is going to bother targeting anything at the corporate market.
Acer, Samsung and Sony are mostly consumer vendors and Steve Ballmer has already warned that he is going to be copying Apple in its drive to sell to consumers.
The logic might be that if he gets enough Windows 8 Tablets and machines out there, then there might be some pressure on corporates to allow BYOD trend involving Windows 8 gear.
This is an interesting concept. It will be the first time that Microsoft has acknowledged that it is rare for corporates to rush to install a new desktop straight away. In the case of Vista and Windows 7, Microsoft pitched a far bit of early advertising trying to encourage corporates to dump their old operating systems.
The new Windows 8 campaign is an admission that it knows that this will not happen.
However it does leave many of Microsoft’s channel partners, many of whom make most of there cash in big corporate sales, shut out of the big Windows 8 launch.
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