Windows 8 Does Not Appeal To Consumers

According to Microsoft, 40 million licenses of Windows 8 have been sold since the launch of the new operating system around 6 weeks ago. However, PC sales are reportedly down more than 13% in the U.S. compared to last year. So we can’t take these numbers as gospel.

This is a surprising statistic given that this time of year (Christmas) is usually a retailers busiest time by far. So why the slump in sales?

Why

Clearly, the market has changed since the launch of Windows XP, Vista or 7. Smartphones and tablets have come to encroach on the use of computers. More worryingly, the drastic change in design of Windows 8 seems to have confused consumers who do not want to have to learn a completely new user interface. With a fragile economic context, they prefer to extend the life of their old computers.
Sign of the current discomfort, PC makers like Lenovo, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Asus have all declined to give sales figures for the holidays. More tellingly, the Amazon ranking of the 100 best selling electronics, only one laptop incorporates the top 50.

Implications

The non consumer trend toward Windows could spell the beginning of a new era and the end of another. In fact, at the time of the release of Windows 7, Android accounted for only 3.9% market share of smartphones. If we begin with the strengths is the marketing power of Microsoft. Most people reading this will have seen the influx of Windows 8 adverts gracing all of our screens. The weak point? Windows 8 denies more than 20 years of habits and resets flat GUI. A Gartner analyst had the following to say:

I like the interface of Windows 8 on a tablet, but not on a laptop, except that unfortunately, this is where it will be used most.

So what will happen?

The thing is that, since the beginning of the development of Windows 8, not less than 10 distributions have emerged. Some examples:

• Mint 13-14
• Ubuntu 11.10 – 12.04 -12.10
• Fedora 16 -17
• And also ElementaryOS, which as the says of some beta-tester, is equipped with spectacular performances.

Devices have also become more open, open hardware grows increasingly. Raspberry Pi phenomena and Arduino, even if they are in their infancy may be the archetype of the computer of tomorrow. Without forgetting Novena, the OpenSource Laptop project, which can easily be customised to a user requirements. Hence the prospect of the rise of open source.