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Microsoft‘s Windows 8 hasn’t taken off as well as the company expected. One reason for this may be the steep licensing price of the OS. The company is now slashing down the costs of Windows 8 licenses by a whopping 70%.

Windows 8 licensing fees are particularly unsustainable for such PC and tablet manufacturers who create low-end machines and devices. Imagine a vendor trying to create a $200 Windows 8 tablet. Until recently, the vendor had to pay a $50 license fee for every copy of OS used.

Considering this conundrum, Microsoft has now announced that the licensing fee for any such Windows 8 machines which retail at less than $250 will be a mere $15. That’s a huge cut in the licensing costs which may bolster the growth of low-end PC market as well as sub-priced tablets.

This will not significantly impact the prices for the consumers but it will certainly encourage more vendors to join the Windows 8 bandwagon. Another policy change by Microsoft is that vendors are no longer required to include touchscreens on every Windows 8 machine or device.

This was a condition levied by Microsoft since the company believed Windows 8 is optimized for touchscreens. However, the necessity of touchscreens had pushed many manufacturers away from Windows 8 and the change in policy aims to revert that. The company is hoping to bump up the adoption rate of the Windows 8 platform with the upcoming Windows 8.1 update scheduled for an April release this year. Coupled with the aforementioned changes, the update may succeed in bringing the limelight that Windows 8 needs.

Source: Bloomberg

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