Microsoft Corp plans to extend the free support period for its Windows XP Home Edition software at least one year longer than planned, a news report said yesterday.
Darren Huston, president of Microsoft's Japan unit, told Kyodo news agency in an interview that the company would extend the support period on a global basis until sometime after 2010 from its initial plan of January 2009, mainly because of strong requests from Japanese consumers.
"It is going to be significantly extended," Kyodo quoted Huston as saying.
Huston declined to specify exactly how long mainstream support -- which includes such services as providing updated security functions to users -- will be extended, according to Kyodo, but said: "When I say significantly, it's more than one year."
The official announcement of the extension will be made today, he said, according to Kyodo.
Huston said that the Japanese market is "the biggest market outside the United States and it's the market where digital lifestyle is defined."
"So if you are not listening to this market, who are you listening to?" he was quoted as saying.
Microsoft Japan spokesman Kazunori Ishii confirmed the company planned to make an announcement today on extending the support program, but he declined to offer details.
Huston's reported comments come just days ahead of the long-delayed release of Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system, the company's first since Windows XP was released in 2001. The company is planning an enormous marketing campaign to tout the new software.
DAMAGE REPORT: Global central banks are assessing war-driven inflation risks as the law of unintended consequences careens around the world, spiking oil prices Central banks from Washington to London and from Jakarta to Taipei are about to make their first assessments of economic damage after more than two weeks of conflict between the US and Iran. Decisions this week encompassing every member of the G7 and eight of the world’s 10 most-traded currency jurisdictions are likely to confirm to investors that the specter of a new inflation shock is already worrying enough to prompt heightened caution. The US Federal Reserve is widely expected to do exactly what everyone anticipated weeks ahead of its March 17-18 policy gathering: hold rates steady. The narrative surrounding that
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) share of the global foundry market rose to almost 70 percent last year amid booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI), market information advisory firm TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said on Thursday. The contract chipmaker posted US$122.54 billion in revenue, up 36.1 percent from a year earlier, accounting for 69.9 percent of the global market, TrendForce said. Its share was up from 64.4 percent in 2024, it said. TSMC’s closest rival, Samsung Electronics, was a distant second, posting US$12.63 billion in sales, down 3.9 percent from a year earlier, for a 7.2 percent share of the global market. In the
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
RSS