Windows 8 sold for half a year sales remain doubtful

Tencent Science and Technology (Tom) Beijing time April 28 news, according to foreign media reports, now from Microsoft October 26, 2012 officially launched the Windows 8 operating system has been a full six months time. At the outset, Microsoft hoped to be able to save the crumbling PC industry with its good support for touch devices and to help itself and OEMs better withstand the threat from Apple. Earlier, Microsoft had released some information about Windows 8 's sales performance, but in recent days the company kept silent. So what is the market performance of this operating system? In fact, the first source of information about the performance of the Windows 8 market comes from Microsoft itself. Last November, Microsoft announced that Windows 8 had sold 40 million system licenses and had a higher rate of user upgrades than the original Windows 7. In January this year, Microsoft announced that Windows 8 had a system-authorized sales volume of 60 million, a rate that was basically consistent with Windows 7 's system licensing speed. However, Microsoft has not released any market data on Windows 8 recently, even though it did not disclose the data in previous earnings reports. It should be noted that when Windows 7 was released three years ago, Microsoft had declared that it was the fastest-selling operating system ever, with about 10% of PCs already installed. Subsequently, on April 27, 2010, Microsoft announced that Windows 7 system authorized sales exceeded 100 million. Outside analysis, Microsoft's sales of Windows 8 system is not a positive signal, and many market research institutions give each other "fight" data is more confusing to consumers. IDC estimates that current PC sales are down about 13.9% from a year earlier, compared with 11.2% for Gartner. However, IDC's data does not count the number of tablets and hybrid devices that are partially installed in the Windows system. IDC to the technology media The verge, no matter what manufacturer, kernel chip and operating system of removable keyboard devices are considered to be tablets, not PCs. As a result, IDC has carried out separate statistics on the shipments of tablet computers. On the other hand, Gartner classifies Windows 8 tablets and blends as "super portable PC Devices", and the organization does not track Windows RT Flat-panel devices. However, the data given by the two agencies show that "windows-based Tablet PCs account for only 2% of all PC shipments". A year-on-year decline in overall PC sales, IDC blamed Windows 8 for "no power". Bob O ' Donnell, vice president of IDC, said: "The release of Windows 8 not only Donniel the PC marketTo stimulate the effect, but further slow the development of this market. "" The views of Windows 8 are real, but people don't seem to be satisfied with every change in Windows 8. Among them, Microsoft's decision to remove the Start button and Start menu is highly controversial. In response, Microsoft has started listening to consumer feedback and is seriously considering adding the option of directly booting to a traditional desktop to help users avoid entering the Metro interface, as well as resuming the Start button. While these moves may help consumers better accept Windows 8, they are far from enough if Microsoft wants to really boost sales. Said Jay Chou, an analyst at IDC. Strategy Analytics, another market research firm, recently published a study showing that Tablet PCs shipped on Windows have risen from 0% in the same period last year to 7.5% in the previous quarter. While this may seem satisfactory, Peter King, director of the Strategy Analytics Panel Strategy Research Service, said, "in absolute terms, this figure is not important". "There is no doubt that Microsoft and its partners have ushered in a bad start to the new system. Because Microsoft's development process is relatively secretive, the company lacks a full understanding of consumer demand. Moreover, sales growth has been slow due to the lack of exposure of new system equipment in retail channels. Pete-King said. Unlike IDC and Gartner, Strategy Analytics has a separate data trail for a hybrid with removable keyboards. However, Pete Gold found that Microsoft and its OEMs were selling these tablet devices directly to corporate customers without paying enough attention to retail and consumer channels. But Microsoft stressed that increasing corporate sales of Surface tablets and Windows systems eased the impact of the x86 PC market to some extent. Obviously, this mitigation is exactly what Microsoft wants surface to do, and that's one of the big reasons the company is putting the product into the Windows business unit. Although the current PC market and windows are struggling, Microsoft still wants to cope with surface's growing distribution channels and the advent of more inexpensive touch windows. It should be noted that even though Microsoft will continue to publish specific authorization numbers for the Windows 8 system in the future, market research agencies will continue to give their own forecasts, but these are only based on a rough calculation of equipment shipments, unable to reflect the real situation of consumers buying these devices. It should be said that, as long as Microsoft does not release the specific sales figures for Windows 8 a day, the outside world can not know the real market performance of this product. According to the present situation, windOWS's 8 sales are probably not up to Microsoft's expectations, and as the Windows Blue System emerges, it may now be time for Microsoft to make information public. After all, Microsoft has already put a huge stake in Windows 8, and outsiders want to know more about the real picture of the product than just Microsoft's gliding.