“Windows 8 has delivered no bump to flagging consumer PC sales in the U.S., a retail research analyst said today,” Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld. “‘There wasn’t any pop at all,’ said Steven Baker of the NPD Group. ‘The hope was that Windows 8 would shift the market to a more positive stand, add some momentum to sales. But that hasn’t happened.'”
MacDailyNews Take: None. Nada. Zilch. Negative zilch, actually.
“Since the Oct. 26 launch of Windows 8, consumer notebook and desktop sales in the U.S. have fallen 21% compared to the same period last year, said Baker,” Keizer reports. “Laptop sales were down even more — 24% year-over-year — while desktop numbers were off considerably less, just 9%. NPD’s numbers did not include sales of the Surface RT…”
MacDailyNews Take: Because they were none. Ba dum chhh!
Keizer reports, “While PC sales were down, Windows tablet sales were virtually nonexistent, Baker said.”
MacDailyNews Take: We hereby rescind our rimshot.
Keizer reports, “Tablet sales represented less than 1% of all Windows 8 device sales to date. With the new operating system’s emphasis on touch and tablets, at the expense, many think, of familiar UI (user interface) elements on the traditional Windows desktop, that number must be especially galling to Microsoft.”
MacDailyNews Take: Quick, Redmondites, big dumb monkey on the loose, duck!
Keizer reports, “NPD’s data has to be particularly depressing for Microsoft and its OEMs because they are the first hard look at Windows 8’s market performance.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Chuck? Ohhh, Chuuuuuckie?!
BTW: Apple Mac sales have outgrown the PC industry as a whole every quarter for six consecutive years and counting.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “lawrence” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Microsoft’s Surface tablet flops, orders reportedly cut in half – November 29, 2012
TechCrunch’s Siegler reviews Microsoft Surface RT: ‘It’s time for a drop test – right into the garbage can’ – November 19, 2012
Slate reviews Microsoft’s Surface tablet: Too slow, mercilessly buggy; why is it so bad? – November 6, 2012
InfoWorld reviews Microsoft Surface RT: A disappointment; you’re better off with Apple’s iPad – October 31, 2012
Gizmodo reviews Microsoft Surface RT: Do not buy; inferior to Apple’s iPad; the worst of both worlds – October 25, 2012
The Verge reviews Microsoft Surface RT tablet: ‘The whole thing is honestly perplexing; who is this for?’ – October 24, 2012
ZDNet’s Kingsley-Hughes: Microsoft’s Windows 8 is an awful, horrible, painful design disaster – June 8, 2012
Analyst meets with big computer maker, finds ‘general lack of enthusiasm’ for Windows 8 – June 8, 2012
Dvorak: Windows 8 an unmitigated disaster; unusable and annoying; it makes your teeth itch – June 3, 2012
The Guardian: Microsoft’s Windows 8 is confusing as hell; an appalling user experience – March 5, 2012
More good news for Apple: Microsoft previews Windows 8 (with video) – June 1, 2011
Chorus:
We don’t do windows monkey boy!
“We don’t need no Windows control!”
(With apologies to Floyd.)
Gr8 newz!! Oh man we love the zero num sum going on at Microcraps over the “savior” Windows H8. Anything that gives us Ballmer sweating, nervous shuffles, chair creaks, silence and occasional coughing in the board room in Redmond is a good thing.
“How long can Gates prop up Ballmer Spock, for… how… long…?” Answer: “For as long as it takes Captain.”
What more is there to say than *SMIRK*
What do you want to bet that those negative numbers also include growing Mac sales? Without the Mac, I suspect those numbers would be even worse. This has been the case in quarters past.
Part of that is because Apple pre-announced the new iMacs, so their desktop sales since Oct 26th have likely been very low.
It makes one wonder why they would “Osbourne” themselves. Perhaps to clear the decks for some other big announcement….?
This is the big turn towards Apple, Mac and iOS
Apple has finally, after many hard years, thru their careful thought, planning and development turned the tides on Windows and the BS ….
MicroShaft had a hand in it as well …… Vista first blunder then no Tablet and when they do produce, it is a wanna be this and that but not really good at any …..
WinDoz 8 will be their undoing ….. Watch Apple take upwards of 30% or better of the laptop / desktop market over the next two years …..
Apple is just one upgrade away, MacAir Retena, from having a totally outstanding line-up that no manufacture can match …..
And when one thinks about it, it all started with iTunes!
Yup.
Wow. MDN, you didn’t even let iCal finish settling Chuck’s comment into the data drive before you unceremoniously yanked it out of it’s expected slumber and thrust it out into the harsh light of day again.
You’re really mean, you know that? I LIKE it!!!!
Carry on…
Where does a monopolist turn when it loses its monopoly?
So, with Windows 8, Microsoft essentially abandons existing “desktop” Windows users, to go after new tablet customers… And gets almost no new tablet customers. Very nice strategy.
Meanwhile, much of the 21% decline is from sales of iPads. This is a reminder that iPad was released as Apple’s answer to “netbooks.” Now, with a $329 iPad (and Windows 8 as the default OS for non-Apple computers), it will be taking even more sales from the Windows PC market.
Ok, math geek time. There is no such thing as negative zero so there can be no negative zilch. That being said, Microsoft’s downwardly direction tickles the hell out of my schadenfreude.
It’s called “hyperbole”, dude.
MDN must have used Windows 8 calculator.
Actually, getting ur-geeky, the IEEE-754-2008 standard for floating point numbers does allow for a negative zero. And it’s been in Fortran for a loooong time…
Mathematicians trump computer programmers every time. Anyone can code a logical fallacy, but mathematics is the purest science.
only with ones complement, which was used on the old cdc 6400, 6600 and 7600 systems for example. most computers used and use today twos complement because it doesn’t have this nuisance. finding a bug due to negative zero was a pain in the neck.
Sorry, but I learned CDC 6000 series Assembly back in the day, and -0 never caused any bugs.
i believe you are referring to cdc compass assembly. if you were using compass then there were ways in compass to avoid this. the problem was that the fortran standard at that time did not account for negative zero, meaning that you couldn’t test for it using the fortran syntax. you weren’t supposed to be able to generate a negative zero, but it was possible to do it accidentally and it really was a pain in the neck.
In VB.net -0 exists. I saw -0 with my own eyes.
Seriously, no joke. I was debugging a VB.net app and the cause of the bug was…… -0.
Which is just another example of why Microslut sucks.
I guess that Cook won’t be struggling to find parts suppliers and assemblers for MacBooks, iPads and iPhones. These suffering, idle businesses will be begging him to send them some orders. LOL!
Just think, the huge drop in demand for cheap, plastic parts for non-Apple kit will soon drive the price of oil into the ground!
I can never bring myself to type the word, so I use ‘Micros**t’.
Feel free to add the proper letters as you deem appropriate.
How about, h and i?
This disaster could largely have been avoided if Microsoft, specifically Sinofsky, had taken an evolutionary approach to Windows 8, e.g. keeping the start button as the trigger for the Modern menu. And also provided visual cues to where things had to be clicked or dragged. I’m a Mac and Windows user over several decades, and I have always been able to figure my way around any OS by figuring it out. I had also watched several youtube videos on Windows 8, but on W8 launch day I went to the store to check it out, and I was unable to do some basic functions like how to close an app. It’s not an easy system to come up to speed. That is putting off potential purchasers.
My prediction is that, in about 3 years time, when Windows 8 has become a comfort zone again for everyone, we’ll largely see the same status quo, with Apple having around 15-18%, and Microsoft having the rest of the desktop marketshare.
As for tablet marketshare, I don’t think Apple can climb back much over 50%.
Let me say this to Apple fanboys: if you talk to Android users, not just the fanatics, but the normal mom and pop users who chose Android over Apple — and I’ve seen it among my non-tech fans — I hear so many of my non-tech fans say they love their Android phones. It is evident that Apple is no longer to juggernaut clear-cut winner in phones and tablets. Non-tech users, who have no addiction to either platform, are just as enthusiastic about their Android phones. So Apple better not get too arrogant, otherwise the games over in 15 years — if you follow corporate history and the graveyard of once-great corporations who thought they’d continue forever.
Anybody seen a DIGITAL computer recently? You think Apple can’t go the same way? Read your history, or you’re destined to repeat the same mistakes.
Win8 was locked into serious design flaws right from the start – M$ have just not grasped AT ALL the differences between tablets and regular computers or mouse & keypad versus touch. For all the perceived speed increases and lower memory footprints there still remain serious issues that may fatally undermine Win8 going forward.
M$ have simply “re-imagined” new ways to fail having not learnt from past mistakes in any way, shape or form.
The only course open now for M$ is to keep digging until they emerge from this dark tunnel they have descended into head first; my guess is that they will come up in a cesspit somewhere and sink without trace (navigation not being one of their strong points…)
Any company that can make this many irrational design decisions and delude themselves to the extent that M$ have done don’t really deserve to reach the promised land.
Many manufacturers use Android. Combined they have more marketshare than Apple. Singly they all have less marketshare than Apple. You are comparing a crowd to an individual.
The PC laptop and desktop numbers presumably include both Windows and OSX machines. Since Apple computer sales are actually up year-over-year, that means that the Windows drop is even more precipitous than 25%.
Typing this on my surface rigt now, I can’t use the key that’s after G but before J because it stopped working a day after it was opened… So that was not a type O or a misspelling. Anyway I ATE ow Microsoft is anding all of tis, all tey need to do is sell te tablets a little ceaper, I don’t get wy tey tink tey can sell te tablets at suc a ig cost….
Please keep in mind my key is not working. just fill it in wen it’s missing.. I can spell!
That’s some serious uality right there.
OK, RT “Tang” that one was clever and funny. It’s a tough row to hoe in old Tang’s shoes, but you know that already, so carry on.
Go Apple!
So many major releases of Windows are utter flops. Windows 8 was an extremely predicable flop – the beta was out for like a year, and anyone using it with half a brain could tell you how deeply flawed it was. And yet they made no significant changes to Windows 8 over the entire year before it was released. The only way I can make sense of it (besides the obvious explanation of MS incompetence) is that it’s like the Producers – MS wanted it to be a flop because they did some crooked accounting to make flopping profitable. hmm.. ♫ Springtime, for Ballmer, and Microsoft ♫
It was totally a result of Microsoft’s politics. Sinofsky liked it, so everyone else’s opinion was thrashed. So when W8 failed on lauch, Sinofsky was canned, but Microsoft was left to carry the consequences of Sinofsky’s poor design decisions. Now I sure how the two ladies who have taken over Sinofsky’s role weren’t also pushing these poor design choices because, if so, then Microsoft is headed for a death spiral.
I bought a Windows 7 license to use with Parallels on my new office Mac, the only reason being is that we have one service that requires us to connect via rdp and the only way to print from it is via Windows, and second, our colour copier/printer only has a Postcript driver for Mac, and doesn’t have a Postscript card on it and Windows was cheaper than the card! For the odd bits we need to print in those circumstances it’s cheaper to go into windows and get out.
MDN take +1