Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., speaks during an event in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Thursday, March 27, 2014. Nadella unveiled Office software for Apple Inc.’s iPad, laying out how he plans to more aggressively push the companys programs onto rival platforms after Windows for mobile devices failed to catch on.David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
In 2015, as Microsoft was preparing to release its Windows 10 operating system, a developer evangelist speaking at a technical session during a company event dropped an eyebrow-raising statement. “Windows 10 is the last version of Windows,” he said. But last week, Microsoft announced an online event to reveal “the next generation of Windows.”
Six years after the remarks, the world’s second-most valuable public company has good reason to change direction. While Microsoft has diversified its business in the past three decades, Windows definitely still matters to the company’s identity and its finances. The corporate logo is still a window.
Here are nine possible justifications for Microsoft’s decision to roll out a major update, which some suspect could be called Windows 11, instead of just another twice-per-year enhancement to Windows 10:
It’s good for business. Shipping new versions of big products such as
