Windows 8 sales are below Microsoft forecasts
Table of contents:
Today we woke up to headlines coming from the other side of the Atlantic bringing the first winds of possible future storms: Windows 8 sales are significantly below the forecasts that Microsoft had made.
The main source of the news has been Paul Thurrott's specialized blog which refers to people from Microsoft itself, where distant drums begin to be heard and sound the first alarms, after the euphoria after the initial announcements about sales of 4 million updates to Windows 8 in the first days of the release has been left behind.
But it's been three weeks now and, just like I wrote in the article about the dark spots in the distribution of Windows 8 machines, Paul says that Microsoft mainly blames the manufacturers hardware. That they are not providing sufficient and necessary support for the new operating system (it seems that they are cooking beans everywhere).
The causes of less than expected sales
But, doing a deeper analysis, the author considers that there are serious problems and impediments that can cause Windows 8 to become a new disaster as Vista was , an operating system that was not given the chance it deserved. At least, whoever writes these lines never even managed to install it, jumping from Windows XP to Windows 7 beta directly.
Thus Thurrott reels off reasons such as the mistake of putting an excellent computer like Surface on the market, with the hyper-cut version of Windows 8, the RT version. And keep waiting for the full version on the x86 machine for at least January. Opening the door for the first comparisons with Android and iOS to be against the less powerful Windows 8; and that causes buyers to make the decision to wait.
He is also forceful criticizing the "stupidity" of Microsoft ignoring the world economic situation and especially in Europe. Possibly this is the worst scenario to make such a risky bet with a galloping crisis that is causing consumption levels to plummet, as the statistics indicate. And that the uncertainty of the consumer does not stop growing in the face of the uncertainty of the evolution of the macroeconomies.
Not to mention that companies are not only very satisfied with Windows 7, but many still use Windows XP, and that the last thing they think about to spend their dwindling budgets is renovating their park operating systems.
Another cause, according to the author and with which I do not entirely agree, that Windows 8 is being sold less than expected comes from a certain confusion on the part of the potential buyer in the face of a huge offer of types of devices, the knowledge that Intel is moving quickly to catch up with the competitors in the tablet and hybrid market and that, in short, right now there is an over offer a variety of hardware on which to define the best device with the best quality/price ratio or, simply, the one that best suits the particular needs of each buyer.
We will see what happens as the months go by and the company's quarterly results arrive. But this news could make more sense of the surprising departure of Steven Sinofsky, ultimately responsible for Windows 8.
Via | Paul Thurrott's Windows Super Site In XatakaWindows | According to Ballmer, Surface sales are off to a modest start
