The Indian government is pushing the Microsoft Corp to provide a massive discounted one-time deal to over 50 million Windows users. This offer is valid in India and if it goes through it will upgrade the existing windows to windows 10.
The Indian Microsoft officials have agreed in principal to this request from the government. Cybersecurity coordinator Gulshan Rai has told the press. However, the Microsoft spokesperson has refused to comment on Microsoft’s India offer. Moreover, the company headquarters in the United States and the regional headquarters in Asia have declined to comment.
According to the experts if Microsoft agrees to this request from India then other countries will follow the same line. Microsoft is a global giant in this field maybe the largest. It is spread across the world and fulfilling the request from all major countries will sink its profits. However, at this moment there is no clear sign that any other country has requested for this kind of discounted priced upgrades for the operating system.
The cyber attacks that occurred over the past few months have prompted the Indian government to take this step. Both the WananCry and Petya ransomware have brought out the vulnerabilities of the older versions of the Windows.
The details on the price cut will be out in some days. However, the speculations are already ripe with the expectation to be at throw-away prices. If it goes through then the upgrade will allow people to upgrade to Windows 10 at discounted prices. India still holds a minuscule number of Windows 10 users and if the company agrees to this demand they are seeing a loss of billions of dollars.
The Petya ransomware was able to affect the operations at the JNPT port terminals and the WannaCry ransomware affected one of the state-run firms in western India. It will be interesting to see how all of this pans out in the coming days.