- Microsoft has hiked the cost of a Windows 11 license for PC makers
- A new report claims that the annual price increase is 'significantly' more this year
- That's really not going to help the PC market, coming on top of all the pain with hardware price rises that we're already experiencing
PC prices are already facing various unfortunate pressures — thanks to the RAM crisis, and other increased component costs aside from memory –— but it appears that Microsoft is throwing fuel on the fire with hikes on the software side.
Wccftech spotted a report from Economic Daily News (EDN), a Taiwanese site, claiming that Microsoft has increased the price it charges PC makers for a Windows 11 license. Apparently the cost of installing Windows 11 on a pre-built desktop PC or a laptop has gone up by 7% to 10% as of last month.
Of course, bear in mind this is just a rumor (and the article is translated, so we need to be careful about any potentially lost meaning), but it's an alarming sounding prospect.
Microsoft puts up the price of a Windows 11 license every year, so this isn't new or unexpected, but normally Microsoft applies a single-digit increase, and this year the price hike has reportedly been a good deal more, possibly tipping into double-digits (10%). The (translated) article calls this a "significant increase" compared to past years, and the information comes from an executive at an (unnamed) PC maker.
Seemingly current product prices already reflect Microsoft's extra charge, with the bigger rises in fees having been given to PCs with faster processors, we're told.
EDN observes that the prices of PCs are expected to rise by 5% in the third quarter of 2026, at least for Acer and Asus systems in the Taiwanese market. Other regions and vendors may, of course, vary, but all OEMs (PC makers) must pay Microsoft for a Windows 11 license (if using the OS, of course).
Analysis: software salt
As noted, these cost increases are supposedly already priced into hardware on the shelves, and EDN observes that neither consumers nor businesses have really batted an eyelid.
That's mainly because the hardware-based pricing misery — for more expensive RAM, SSDs, GPUs (increasingly of late) and other components — is driving the nastier price rises, and the Windows 11 increase is relatively small fry in comparison. So, this software hike has purportedly flown under the radar, effectively eclipsed by the hardware pain.
If this report is true, and Microsoft has indeed put prices up a good deal more than normal, that's a distinctly unhelpful move. On the hardware side of the equation, we know prices to manufacture goods are going up — and that cost increases will inevitably be passed on to the end buyer. That's just business, but there's no obvious reason why software costs should be hiked more than normal, other than what the cynical might suggest appears to be opportunism from Microsoft (and maybe the growing cost of the AI side of the company).
This is effectively rubbing software salt into hardware wounds, and the PC market could really do without it. Although speaking of salt, all of this depends on whether this rumor is on the money, and I think it's worth remaining somewhat skeptical in that regard, albeit that EDN has proved a reliable source in the past.
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Apple MacBook Air 13-inch M5
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