Hi Paul,

Here are my two cents regarding the forces sustaining pushing Windows Cloud. Of course there maybe others. I believe that Windows Cloud is coming to replace Windows Home …

1) There are forces pushing for free consumer oriented OS’s. Within this I believe that with Windows Cloud is pursuing a business model whose revenue is pushed mainly by the App Store revenue and Private App Store infrastructure revenue. This can potential make PC a little bit cheaper. A $50 cut on a $300 PC its a lot.

2) By making the purchase of Windows Professional an option across the board, not by default and eliminating Windows Home and its licensing costs, of course user will still be able to buy/upgrade to Windows Professional, by buying directly to MS, bypassing OEMs. This can potential give MS a greater revenue than the current licensing model where OEM’s are involved.

3) Off loading applications has been always a security problem. By allowing users to install only App Store apps these systems can be potentially more secure.

4) I suspect Windows Cloud will not allow for custom OEM setups. That is, the entire system service is done by MS, no OEM intermediary. This gives them greater control.

I think it will be for any kind of app in the store, not just UWP. Provided that the hardware supports it. For instance if the hardware supports Win32 apps, if an app of that kind is in the store, than it runs. When progressive apps are supported in Edge, those ones will be also.

5) Window Cloud for organizations can also make sense using Windows Private Store part of Windows Store for Business (https://technet.microsoft.com/itpro/windows/manage/windows-store-for-business-overview). Schools will use this.

So this can be potential a better source of revenue for MS and a better model overall, than Windows Home. One may be thinking that who will want this? The answer to this question is a bit like, who would want an XBOX One without a Blueray drive to load and install software … for some people that is unthinkable, for others is fine.

The biggest question mark of all this, is that the Windows Store is not very good. Some people might not like the idea of spending extra money on the top of the PC purchase to upgrade to Windows Professional simply because an app they use is not in the app store. These people don’t believe they should be penalized due to the state of the Windows Store at the moment, considering the investment already done on buying software outside of it. This, I think its the main problem that if not taken care, it might backfire on MS. Another is that OEM’s, even though licensing Windows Cloud may be free, they can decide not to take that into the device price and bank on that value anyway.