Slashdot Mirror
NPD Group Analysts Say Windows 8 Sales Sluggish
Nerval's Lobster writes "While Microsoft claims it's sold 40 million Windows 8 licenses in the month since launch—a more rapid pace than Windows 7—new data from research firm The NPD Group suggests that isn't helping sales of actual Windows devices, which, in its estimation, are down 21 percent from last year. Desktops dropped 9 percent year-over-year, while notebooks fell 24 percent. 'After just four weeks on the market, it's still early to place blame on Windows 8 for the ongoing weakness in the PC market,' Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at The NPD Group, wrote in a Nov. 29 statement attached to the data. 'We still have the whole holiday selling season ahead of us, but clearly Windows 8 did not prove to be the impetus for a sales turnaround some had hoped for.'" That seems to match the public grumbling of Acer and Asus about early sales. And though these figures exclude Surface sales, the newly announced prices on for new Windows 8 Pro-equipped Surface tablets might not endear them to anyone. Have you (or has your business?) moved to Windows 8?
Really? Most people I've talked to (normal people, not neckbeards) have refused to upgrade to Windows 8 because it's incomprehensible. Go on Youtube and look at the number of hits people are getting on "x relative tries to use Windows 8..." These aren't completely computer illiterate people (some of them are I'm sure), yet compared to what they're used to, Windows 8 is impossible to navigate. It's as if Microsoft dived head first into the tablet market without checking to see if there was any water in the pool first.
It solves one of the worst and most persistent security issues with the Internet.
With the introduction of IE 10 on Windows 8, Microsoft relieves users from the threat of browser-based attacks, by making the system unusable for web-browsing.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I've heard nothing on their sales so far, which means to me they are terrible. Much like the Surface production being halved.
I don't criticize MS for trying something different. It is a bold move. But, what they are putting out ISN'T the solution to the problem. They just can't figure out what to do it seems.
Actually, all this report says is that US desktop and laptop sales are sluggish and that Windows 8 has done nothing to change that. In fact, the actual report, not linked to for some reason, states this: “After just four weeks on the market, it’s still early to place blame on Windows 8 for the ongoing weakness in the PC market.” It also states that slow back to school sales have increased inventory, which is hampering Windows 8 sales.
They also have a very strange definition of "four weeks on the market" as the period they're looking at is Oct 22, 2012 - Nov 14 2012... which includes 5 days prior to Windows 8 being released. With Microsoft selling about 1.5M licenses a day in these initial weeks, 5 days where sales are practically zero is a lot to include in the data.
While IE10 has indeed be made Windows 8 completely unsuitable for user web-browsing, the architectural choice of moving IE10 into the Windows 8 kernel has left a security hole of goatse.cx proportions.
Windows 8: where all Al Gore's Internet can root for success!
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Have you (or has your business?) moved to Windows 8?
At our company, which has well over 30,000 PCs deployed, >90% of our systems are still on Windows XP. Who are you kidding? Who is Microsoft kidding? If it ain't broke, don't upgrade it
And before the bleeding edge fanboys... hell, before the slightly-bruised-edge fanboys get up in arms about whatever technical features there are that makes Win 7 a superior OS than XP (and I'm sure there are numerous examples), most organizations of our size suffer from the "Battlestar 78" problem. Our IT environment can only move forward as fast as the slowest mission-critical legacy app. When your biz ops/reg compliance/contractual obligs depend on a niche application that is not yet certified for IE 8, then the revenue-creating side of the company doesn't want to hear squat about group policy optimizations, memory management, or whatever.
But the local computer shop or data recovery firm sure cares, as secure boot eliminates their ability to bypass windows to recover data direct from storage.
That is FUD, lies, and misinformation.
a) secure boot can be easily disabled within bios/uefi on all x86 units, which is all current Windows 8 desktops, all current windows 8 laptops, and a big chunk of the windows 8 tablets too.* So if you drag in a working windows 8 pc, they can boot their favorite live cd with minimal effort.
b) Worst case they'd pull the hard drive out of the defective unit and just extract the data directly. Half the data recovery jobs a computer shop deals with are due to hardware failure where the laptop or desktop is fried, and pulling the hard drive out is the smart thing to do if the rest of the PC hardware doesn't work or is failing or is unreliable.
Secureboot is nearly irrelevant in this scenario.
Really, the only people secureboot currently impacts in any non-trivial way are people who want to dual boot linux and windows 8 on the same PC.
* WinRT tablets are the exception, but those devices are very much ipad market product, and data recovery would proceed along the same lines it does for an ipad. Can you boot an ipad up off your favorite linux live CD to recover the data? Of course not. Same thing.
Joe Shmoe will care that the latest virus to infest his system leaves his data corrupted and secure boot prevents any remedial actions.
Joe Shmoe doesn't think that far ahead.
My own observation - two weeks ago, I went to the mall to check out the iPad mini (wife is thinking about one for Christmas). Microsoft had rented a kiosk to show Surface tablets not 200 feet away from the Apple store (gotta admire the chutzpah).
In the Apple store, I saw a dozen people playing with iPads or iPad minis, with Apple employees hovering nearby in case of questions. People were tapping and gesturing and doing what you'd expect on an iPad, almost entirely without any assistance from the employees.
Outside, about a half dozen people were clustered around the Surface kiosk talking with Microsoft employees. The difference? The Microsoft employees were having to show the users what to do, step-by-step . No one seemed to be able to just pick one up and make it work. Everyone needed help. The contrast was absolutely remarkable.
Windows 8 is the new Vista. I expect to see the Metro GUI turned into an option for Windows 9, and more heads to roll at Microsoft.
Dude, just stop. Whatever they're paying you, it's not worth your dignity.