Android accounts for one-quarter of mobile web traffic
Android is mopping up Apple and RIM's declining mobile mindshare in the US, you'll find nothing but corroboration from Quantcast. The analytics firm reckons a full one-quarter of mobile web traffic stateside comes from devices running Google's OS
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I think that the logic behind this action is very clear.
In Russia (don't know about elsewhere), a pirated copy of ... anything costs about $4/disc.
By selling their software at a price that is comparable to the black market price, they can encourage people to spend their money on the legal version (presumably because of the promises of extra stability and lack of hassle that Microsoft's anti-piracy campaigns drone about).
If this is successful, it will starve the pirates of income, causing them to go out of business or, at least, to stop selling Microsoft products.
I don't believe it can work. It would work, if all the pirated discs were being sold by one large monopolistic entity, that only sold Microsoft discs (a kind of DarkMicrosoft). Then it would be difficult for it to re-enter the market and win back their customers.
Of course, this isn't true.. there are nearly no barriers to entry to selling pirated discs, and existing pirates sell everything from movies and music to operating systems and applications (typically bundled several hundred to a disc).
If customers start purchasing legal $3 copies of Windows, they will still go to the pirates to get everything else they need for their computer. If Microsoft's price goes up to $20, the pirates can just start selling the pirated copy again. In fact, this is market economics at work, with a perfectly inelastic supply (of pirates who can turn a profit at 30 cents a disc), and a very elastic demand (of consumers who aren't willing to pay more than $5 or so for their software)