“The numbers are coming in on touchscreen laptop sales, and they don’t look good. In May of this year, a report from DisplayBank, a division of market research company IHS, said that only 10 percent of laptops shipped worldwide during the first three months of 2013 had a touchscreen,” Matt Smith writes for Digital Trends.
“And it gets worse. PC sales are plummeting, so whatever slice touchscreens take is part of a dwindling pie,” Smith writes. “That in turn worsens overall adoption, because these market share figures only cover new devices, not the existing base. There are hundreds of millions of Windows users who have existing PCs without touch, and Windows 8 does not and will never provide a reason to upgrade for them.”
Smith writes, “Windows 8’s flaws have resulted in the worst of all worlds. Instead of providing a cross-platform solution, Microsoft bred an operating system that’s not great for any particular platform… This is a dire situation. Instead of encouraging growth in a PC market assailed by tablets, Microsoft has made the situation worse by giving users yet another reason not to buy a new PC… Windows 8 is a failure.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: What was that we wrote way back on MacDailyNewsJune 1, 2011? Oh, yeah:
Microsoft, in trying to cram everything into Windows 8 in an attempt to be all things to all devices, will end up with an OS that’s a jack of all trades and a master of none (which, after all, ought to be Microsoft’s company motto)… We simply do not see the world clamoring for the UI of an iPod also-ran now ported to an iPhone wannabe that nobody’s buying to be blown up onto a PC display.
From what we’ve seen so far, Windows 8 strikes us as an unsavory combination of Windows Weight plus Windows Wait.
Not to mention that probably no one on earth knows how much or what kinds of residual legacy spaghetti code roils underneath it all (shudder)… If Microsoft’s going to ask Windows sufferers to “learn a whole new computer” (and that’s exactly how they’ll look at it, regardless of how Microsoft pitches it), millions will simply say, “Time to get a Mac to match my iPod, iPhone, and iPad!”
As if they needed it: More good news for Apple.
Related articles:
Windows 8 continues to flop hard – June 3, 2013
Microsoft offers no apology for Windows 8, promises better with Windows Blue (Screen of Death) – May 7, 2013
Windows 8ista: Microsoft admits failure – May 7, 2013
Microsoft partners say Windows 8 caused ‘millions of customers’ to switch to Apple – April 18, 2013
Stick a fork in Microsoft’s Windows, it’s done – April 17, 2013
Apple Macintosh owns 45% of PC market profits – April 16, 2013
Steve Jobs’ revenge – April 12, 2013
Microsoft’s stock takes beating after putrid Windows PC shipment reports – April 11, 2013
Apple Macintosh on the rise as Windows PC market plummets – April 11, 2013
Gartner: PC Market posts 11.2 percent decline in Q113; Apple Mac sales up 7.4 percent in U.S. – April 10, 2013
More good news for Apple: Microsoft previews Windows 8 (with video) – June 1, 2011