New
#1
MS shot themselves in the foot and created a catch-22 by allowing XP to exist and support it far longer than they should have.
With a 2012 Win 8 release, and continued XP support till 2014 (albeit limited) - where is the incentive for companies using XP to roll out when a new release is 'always just over the horizon' ? The same applies to non-commercial end users.
To maintain such a short 3 year turnaround, they really do have to look at lowering prices for their releases to entice more companies and end users to keep abreast of the latest release schedule.
Otherwise they will still have the dichotomy of supporting a superseded OS as well as maintaining support for the latest OS.