Why Microsoft’s Windows 8 is an even bigger flop than Windows Vista

“Windows 8 is doing significantly worse than Microsoft’s biggest failure, Windows Vista,” John Rizzo writes for MacWindows. “Five months after its debut last fall, Windows 8 has a 2.67% market share. Windows Vista had 4.52% market share at its 5-month mark. You can run Windows 8 on a Mac, but it seems few want to run it on a PC. And Windows Blue won’t change this.”

“The numbers are surprising when you consider that Windows Vista was the Edsel of tech, one of the most spectacular market failures of the last decade,” Rizzo writes. “But the lag behind Vista is even worse when you consider that Microsoft’s plan of running Windows 8 on multiple platform didn’t strengthen the OS. Instead, it is failing on multiple platforms.”

Rizzo writes, “Steven Vaughan-Nichols of ZDNet recently wrote: ‘Windows 8’s failure is actually greater than it appears. The tablet and phone markets in 2007 were next to non-existent. Now, in a market where NPD expects tablets to out sell notebooks by year’s end, neither Windows 8 nor its cousins Windows RT and Windows Phone 8 even appear on NetApplication’s mobile and tablet reports for February 2013. How bad is that? Android 1.6, with is tiny 0.02% of the market, does make the list.’ The Android 1.6 that Windows 8 hasn’t caught up to is 5 years old.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Windows 8ista.

41 Comments

    1. Let the M$ hate circle jerk commence!! How many ignorant Microsoft and Windows 8 comments can you fit on one page?

      Microsoft products have never made me trendy enough, and you need a degree to use Windows 8. What was Microsoft thinking, changing the UI like that. I’m too stupid to understand how it works, that’s why I love my Apple products. They follow KISS, keep it simple stupid.

  1. I’m so glad about this, I really am. I quit using Windows professionally (as a platform for software development) about 6 years ago and have never looked back. Microsoft deserves all of this and more for their tactics during the ’90s.

  2. With tablets projected to surpass desktop sales, its a terrible sign. MS gained traction against Apple in the 90’s by being the first with a less expensive “me too” version of the Mac, but Android beat it to the punch with a less expensive “me-too” version of the iPad. As a mater of fact, in this bad economy MS doesn’t even have a product that can compete with even Apple on price in the tablet market, much less Android. MS fell asleep at wheel, got lazy and too cozy in the belief their monopoly would last forever.

    1. ZDNet seems to point out today in desperation “Latest OS share data shows Windows still dominating in PCs”. Uh, well yeah, for now. But what else would “dominate” on a PC anyways? Unfortunately at the 5 month mark Windows Vista had twice the market share Windows 8 does. And Windows Blue won’t do anything to change it (in fact probably make it worse eliminating even more of the older Windows comfort features). They say “slow adoption” but mean GLACIALLY slow adoption. They should have called it Windows Waterloo.

  3. Windows 9, 10, 11, won’t really help… they never listen to their customers, ever, so this is what they get. The user experience is terrible. The few that like it, are so Windows inclined, they just don’t care.

    1. Mine is running XP. And migration to Win 7 is planned for the next two years. By the time we migrate to 8 (an organisation with over 10,000 users), our desktop OS will be 15 years old! And those MS XP licenses are just as old. In other words, Microsoft last saw our money when Clinton was fresh out of office…

      1. With over 10,000 users you guys have been on an enterprise volume licensing deal with yearly fees all this time.

        Don’t ever think Uncle Balmer is not getting his blood money! 😉

  4. Where are they? They were the early adopters, the geeks, the power users that got burnt by Vista. They upgraded to 7, looked at 8 and basically panned it. The voices that would be up in arms, have stayed with Windows 7.

    Saisho wa, anta ga dame da, ni kai wa, ore ga baka da.

  5. 15 minutes or so after this story was posted, every comment with a negative slant towards Microsloth as a single vote, with a single star. Does anyone think there’s a Microslut evangelist out there?

  6. Microsoft is stupid. You do not make 1 OS to run on multiple platforms. Not only it is still windows with a a different UI. Apple done their homework and done it the right way. You make a OS for computers and a separate one for mobil devices. Also you make them brand new from the ground up not a port. They need to get rid of Balmer and all the other backward thinkers at Microsoft. .

    1. I think you are over simplifying the problem. They (MS) should keep Balmer, and maybe re-paint the lines in the parking lots at Redmond. That should be enuf for now…

      As long as it takes.

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