Initial days were terrific for Windows 8; there is no doubt in that. However, off late rumors of dipping, rather sluggish, sales were in the air. Certain parties were of the opinion that the ‘400-million projected target’ is nothing but a pipedream. According to few experts, the sales of Windows 8 were not moving at an explosive rate as predicted, but are slowly and steadily catching up. Contrary to these buzzes, if Tami Reller, an executive from Microsoft is to be believed, almost 40 million Windows 8 licenses were sold within last one month. This directly means that Windows 8 is outpacing Windows 7 in term of upgrades, which in my view is not a bad achievement by any stretch of imagination.
Before moving further, let me take you through to the latest estimates of Windows users. As of November 19, 1.19% of computers run Windows 8 compared to 45.54% for Windows 7 and 39% for Windows XP. It may surprise a few, (considering that Microsoft’s Windows 8 advertising budget is $1 billion) but the percentage of Windows 8 users in first three weeks of its release is lesser than those who switched to Windows 7 (2.66%) within a week following October 22, 2009, the day it hit the road. Nevertheless, as expected, the sales of Windows 8 are almost double the number of Windows Vista copies sold in the same period. Windows Vista, as many would agree with me, was a disaster for Microsoft.
Now let us analyze why Windows 8 didn’t receive the same response that its forerunning version enjoyed. In my opinion, the new design with array of tiles on the screen almost confused the users. They were used to a particular UI for past two decades and a sudden deviation from it will take time to gain acceptance. Anyways personally I am for this UI as it is both beautiful and beneficial. Even the ‘Start’ button is missing here. Probably these are just initial ‘hiccups’ that may get done with in a short span. Even Apple had undergone such situations when it launched iPhone in 2007 and iPad in 2010. They too had different ‘User Interfaces’ which Mac users were unused of. But in just a short time both iPhone and iPad became huge hits among the same set of users. This will surely repeat here in case of Windows 8 as well. And those who cite the figures of Windows 7 are forgetting the fact that Windows 7 came in to resolve the problems with Windows Vista. So naturally it was expected to do wonders in the initial days itself. That factor does not apply here to Windows 8.
Is one month that big time to give a verdict? Well I don’t vote for that. Microsoft has just started the game, after all $1 billion is huge. The company is pretty confident of its future. Even those who argue that the sales are not explosive as predicted are expecting Windows 8 to pick up by the second quarter of 2013. Perhaps the 40 million licenses may not reach 400 million in next 30 days. For that Microsoft may need to do real magic. But who knows if magic may happen by then. After all it is Microsoft.
Image by Ceo1O17
