Microsoft Money to be sold online only

Microsoft Money to be sold online only
From:http://www.1topsupplier.com/buy-pc/
Key words: PC, computer, company
The tradition of walking into a store and picking software from the shelf already seems to some PC users as old-fashioned as sitting down and ordering a drink from a drug store soda fountain
In this era of high-speed Internet access, it's often easier to click a mouse and download a piece of software straight to the computer desktop, or fire up a Web browser and access a program as an online service.
Most people in the industry don't expect packaged software, as a category, to die anytime soon. But changes in technology and consumer habits are increasingly causing software companies to think twice about those boxes and installation disks that they ship to stores.
Which is one reason consumers will no longer find boxes of Microsoft Money in stores after current supplies run out. Microsoft said earlier this month that it would discontinue packaged retail sales of the personal financial-management software - instead shifting entirely to online downloads.
Microsoft says it's embracing a trend experienced by that product: In the past year, more than 50 percent of Microsoft Money Plus sales came via downloads, the company says. That was more than three times greater than in the previous year.
"This is really the key stat that helped make the decision very easy for us," said Chris Jolley, group manager for Microsoft Financial Products.
Microsoft - which still sells lots of copies of Windows, Office and other programs in traditional stores - says the decision applies only to the Money product line. In a statement posted on the Microsoft Money online forum, the company said it "does not see shrink-wrapped software going away anytime soon."
Numbers from the NPD Group research firm support that assertion: As of last year, about 70 percent of the dollar volume of software sales was still going through traditional, bricks-and-mortar retail stores in the United States.
Packaged software is "still an important piece of the software sales pie," said Michael Redmond, an NPD analyst, in an e-mail message last week.
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