Microsoft Windows 11: What Investors Need to Know

Microsoft (MSFT -2.45%) launched its latest version of its Windows operating system (Windows 11) recently, and it has some pretty interesting features. In this Fool Live clip, recorded on Sept. 29, Fool contributor Toby Bordelon explains what investors (and Windows PC users) should know about Windows 11. 

Toby Bordelon: Lots of news from Microsoft recently. Big news, Windows 11 is launching next week. This is an upgrade to what we thought and what we were told by Microsoft was going to be the last version of Windows ever, Windows 10. Not so much, Windows 11 coming. But this is the welcome surprise. I think it's been well-received for Microsoft fans, a new operating system version here.

A big announcement regarding Windows 11 that came yesterday. I don't think it's a big announcement. They just announced an implementation of something they already alluded to. The ability to use Android apps on the Windows. This is going to open up the ecosystem a little bit and potentially offer a nice solution to some ignoring problems. Say I have a home automation system in my house, but there's no desktop version of the interface. It's only a smartphone app. Well, now, if I can use Android apps on my Windows desktop, I can actually manage that from my desktop computer at home. It's going to provide just more flexibility for users of a Windows PC.

The related thing to this that happened yesterday is Microsoft said, now, we're finally at the point we're opening up Windows 11 to third-party app stores. Now, you may remember the news, Apple just finishing up suit by Epic over the iPhone App Store on a similar issue. Interesting enough, Microsoft announced two of the first app stores come into Windows 11. One of those is Epic's, which I find interesting. The other is Amazon's (AMZN -1.65%) Android app store, which is one way they're getting Android apps into Windows 11 through the Amazon app store. That's interesting to see that coming to fruition now right before the launch. It's going to be there at launch it looks like.

Windows 11 is a free upgrade. Microsoft says they're not going to take any fees from these third-party app stores. They don't have to take anything off the top, like say an Apple (AAPL 0.52%) or Google (GOOG -1.96%) (GOOGL -1.97%) Buzz for their app stores. This is really not about making money directly off a Windows 11 from consumers, it's about expanding the ecosystem, improving the OS, strengthening their dominance in the OS world because that's still a thing. The desktop OS does still exist, and it's still a thing that people use. This is good to see.

The other stuff we saw recently for Microsoft is we have new devices from Windows 11. I'm going to show you a couple of pictures here. You see this, some of the new devices they announced. They got a new Surface Pro, they got a new Surface Pro X, a new Surface Pro Go, they got a new Surface Laptop. They got the second version of their dual-screen Android phone, which is quite interesting. A lot of new stuff coming from Microsoft.

Last point, apparently, Brian, I know you probably saw this. Teams has a phone feature now. You can integrate Teams with these VoIP desktop phones you see in offices to compete with Zoom Phone. I do not know why all of these video conferencing apps are suddenly deciding, let's compete over desktop phones for office workers. But here we are. They are doing that and it's nice to see some competition in that market, I guess. Maybe 2020 was so dramatic that we're all deciding, hey, let's go back to 1990 and use the phones we had back then. But now, you have options.

If you are a business which wants to integrate your video conferencing software into your phone system and you're using Zoom (ZM -0.99%) or using Teams, you can go with either one of those. It's interesting to see that.