Su said:
“With the Windows 10 launch at the end of July, we are watching sort of the impact of that on the back-to-school season.”
You can check out the full transcript on Seeking Alpha.
This is a bit earlier than expected. Most observers expected Windows 10 to land sometime in August or September, but it’s close. A July launch would make a lot of sense for back-to-school sales, but then again, Su may be referring to RTM.
Su specifically mentioned possible inventory issues, and we need to keep in mind that the Windows 10 release will be somewhat different to Windows releases of yesteryear. The OS will automatically land on Windows 8.1 machines as well.
This alone could cause the inventory issues Su was talking about, since it may be necessary to get this message across to the average consumer – even if they buy a new Windows 8.1 machine during the back-to-school shopping season, they will get Windows 10 in no time.