Half a billion people to use Windows 8 next year

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heatlesssun

Extremely [H]
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http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57...on-people-to-use-windows-8-next-year-ballmer/

Ballmer my very well regret saying this, it wouldn't be the first time that he embarrassed himself with his mouth and sure it's his job to be the cheerleader in chief at Microsoft but still, a lot of balls. Hell Windows 8 could sell only 440 million copies, outsell Macs, iPads , Chromebooks and Android tablets combined and still be seen as a failure.
 
I think Steve Balmer is going to be relieved of his duties after Windows 8 flops. He has consistently be ranked as one of the worst executives, and their new OS is changing to much, to fast.
 
not as one of, as THE worst CEO.

can't wait to see him shit canned but i hope it is after dealing a few more fatal blows to microsoft.
 
madrebel said:
not as one of, as THE worst CEO.
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I don't know about that. Sure, under his watch MS has fucked up some things, but they've done some good things as well.

I think calling him the worst shows a severe lack of perspective. I would nominate RIM ceo(s) before MS, in a heartbeat. Or nokia. Hell, Carly Fiorina deserves a mention well before Balmer.
 
Indeed, MS makes record profits, what, every quarter? Until that changes, the people who call Balmer the worse CEO are just being childish, imo. As far as Win 8 having 500M users at the end of next year, I'd have to see it to believe it. I believe eventually the reasonable detractors will see the light, but that's still a very high number for any OS to get in a year. Win 8 would need 25% of the OS market in one year, less probable things have happened but I doubt it.
 
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At worst, the ARM version will be a flop while the PC version sells millions, even if it's just used as Windows 7.1 (or Vista.2).

MS's only problem is the shrinking PC market.
 
Stone Cold said:
At worst, the ARM version will be a flop while the PC version sells millions, even if it's just used as Windows 7.1 (or Vista.2).

MS's only problem is the shrinking PC market.
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explain your logic.

arm powers the majority of 'hot' devices yet you think the arm version of win8 will flop.

next you say the PC market is shrinking but think win8 for x86 will sell millions.

wtf?
 
madrebel said:
explain your logic.

arm powers the majority of 'hot' devices yet you think the arm version of win8 will flop.

next you say the PC market is shrinking but think win8 for x86 will sell millions.

wtf?
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ARM isn't hot. The OS's running on it (iOS/Android) are hot in Mobile.

For Windows ARM isn't an advantage, it is a disadvantage.

Win8ARM locks into a walled garden with almost no software.

Medfield has similar perf/watt with ARM and lets you have a Win8 tablet that runs plugins (like Flash), lets you run legacy software to cover the lack of Metro software.
 
Actually, the very first sentence in the linked article misquotes the AFP source referenced in that same sentence. AFP quotes Ballmer as saying there will be up to 500 million Windows 8 users by the end of 2013. While citing that AFP article, Cnet in turn claims Ballmer said there will be more than 500 million Windows 8 users. That's a pretty substantial difference in meaning. Without seeing the speech we can't tell if Ballmer was serious or in jest when he said whatever he said, but we can tell that Cnet is misquoting its source.

A journalist getting the story wrong! Imagine that!
 
the OS' that run on it do so for a reason. moorsetown was trash compared to ARM SoCs. medfield 'might' matter but currently it is little more than a press release and one of the major partners, motorola, may be getting screwed by apple so up in smoke goes the whole motorola/medfield/android love triangle.

as for the software thing, windows is fucked in general here. both its major competitors have large app stores so regardless of the cpu arch they're behind here and with vapps running legacy apps natively is really only attractive for poor connection scenarios which aren't numerous enough to account for even 1% of this supposed 500 million win8 users.

enterprise wants no part of win8. consumers are largely meh on win8. this means microsoft needs to sell a boat load of phones/tablets etc to hit that number, which just isn't going to happen.
 
I seriously doubt they will sell 200 million Win8 copies in a year, Vista didn't and I think Win8 is another Vista.
 
Snowdog said:
I seriously doubt they will sell 200 million Win8 copies in a year, Vista didn't and I think Win8 is another Vista.
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It's kind of difficult to equate Vista and Windows 8. First of all, even with current slow rates of growth the PC market is much bigger. Secondly, if you put the Metro controversy aside, there's a lot of things Windows 8 is that Vista wasn't. Windows 8 is smaller, faster, in my experience even in test form almost as stable as Windows 7 and a bit more battery efficient. Plus combine the dizzying array of devices that Windows 8 will run on, touch screen laptops, tablets, laptop/tablet hybrids, things that really didn't exist with Vista, not to mention a whole new generation of apps and maybe just as important as anything, Windows 8 will probably be a LOT more compatible with existing apps than Vista and you just simply have a lot of factors in Windows 8's favor they Vista didn't have going for it.

So other than saying lots of people on the Internet seem not to like Windows 8 and Metro and compare Windows 8 to Vista, technically the comparison is meaningless.
 
Technically no two situations are identical.

But people like what they are used to and I would say the online sentiment is even more against Win8, than it was against Vista, and Win7 is even more beloved than XP. Were you facing more oppostion when you were cheerleading Vista, or now when you are cheerleading Win8? ;)

Vista IIRC sold ~100 million units in one year. The market is bigger today, but twice as big?

200 Million will be challenge. 500 Million is laughable.
 
Snowdog said:
Technically no two situations are identical.

But people like what they are used to and I would say the online sentiment is even more against Win8, than it was against Vista, and Win7 is even more beloved than XP. Were you facing more oppostion when you were cheerleading Vista, or now when you are cheerleading Win8? ;)

Vista IIRC sold ~100 million units in one year. The market is bigger today, but twice as big?

200 Million will be challenge. 500 Million is laughable.
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Honestly I don't really recall cheerleading Vista. When I was testing it I ran into plenty of issues. I don't think that Vista was as bad as many were saying. In my testing of Windows 8 I've run into even fewer technical issues than I did with Windows 7 and I'm running it on more hardware than I did 7.

And honestly I'm not even really cheerleading Windows 8, I'm simply pointing out what I'm seeing. I certainly am not seeing the horrific keyboard and mouse issues people complain about and I used it all the time with keyboards and mice doing the same things I do with Windows 7. Also I think people are looking at touch as an either or proposition that excludes keyboards and mice when again, I don't see it. The idea is to have keyboards, mice, touch and even pens work well though not in all situations and all applications. Certainly an old traditional keyboard and mouse driven desktop app isn't going to become touch friendly with Windows 8 and when browsing on a desktop you might want to use a desktop browser and not a Metro one. Windows 8 is pretty flexible in ways that no other OS is because it's up the user to pick the input methods and then apps they want to use and currently no other OS works this way, not to this extent. If that's cheerleading, fine, but the idea of Windows 8 is to be able to use different form factors and input methods and use all the software you've always used along with a new generation of touch first apps and at least technically that exactly what it does.

As for Windows 8's sales I have no idea. Again, Windows 8 is going to be accompanied but a lot of new hardware that simply doesn't exist today. If the hardware is good and reasonably priced I think Windows 8 will do well. If the hardware isn't good or is expensive then Windows 8 won't do well.
 
i think there is a lot of microsoft fatigue as well. there are other options that work as well and in some cases better. people are buying these options and liking them. as an example, macbooks are everywhere now in IT because if you need windows you can just run it in a VM.

5 years ago nobody in IT had a macbook. well, there was that one guy, but he was into hentai and was just strange in general ...

point is with cloud, virtualization, and everything else folks realize that they don't need windows as much as they used to.
 
madrebel said:
i think there is a lot of microsoft fatigue as well. there are other options that work as well and in some cases better. people are buying these options and liking them. as an example, macbooks are everywhere now in IT because if you need windows you can just run it in a VM.

5 years ago nobody in IT had a macbook. well, there was that one guy, but he was into hentai and was just strange in general ...

point is with cloud, virtualization, and everything else folks realize that they don't need windows as much as they used to.
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Not exactly sure how running Windows in a VM is a sign of Microsoft fatigue. Plus in this same talk, Ballmer said that Microsoft will ship 350 millions copies of Windows 7 this year which is more than any single year in its prior two full years of existence. While there are other options and they may work better for some than Windows, and while Windows has its problems and does face challenges it still seems to endure.
 
heatlesssun said:
Not exactly sure how running Windows in a VM is a sign of Microsoft fatigue. Plus in this same talk, Ballmer said that Microsoft will ship 350 millions copies of Windows 7 this year which is more than any single year in its prior two full years of existence. While there are other options and they may work better for some than Windows, and while Windows has its problems and does face challenges it still seems to endure.
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so, microsoft is going to sell 850 million licenses for end user compute devices between now and fiscal end 2013?

pretty sure balmer is praying the myans aren't wrong then as he will be.

and yes, running windows in a vm because you have to is a sign of fatigue. if you wanted to run windows natively you would run it natively.
 
Win8 won't take off like a rocket. It won't matter how good it is. It'll be like selling XP to businesses back when it came out. Win7 is too good for people to just drop it immediately, just like NT4 and Win2k were too good to get business users to just jump on XP. Hell, even gamers and home users didn't jump on XP. There were a lot of "Win98 v. XP: which is better for gaming" debates on [H] at the time.
 
madrebel said:
so, microsoft is going to sell 850 million licenses for end user compute devices between now and fiscal end 2013?

pretty sure balmer is praying the myans aren't wrong then as he will be.

and yes, running windows in a vm because you have to is a sign of fatigue. if you wanted to run windows natively you would run it natively.
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Yeah, I know, it doesn't seem possible, but at the same time what's rather staggering about this is that it could still be something like 600 million, which I don't see as that far fetched and it would be a failure.

Only Microsoft could sell 600 million copies of something in two and still be seen as having failed. To me that's what's amazing. Which is why I am surprised by Ballmer pegging numbers like this.
 
heatlesssun said:
While there are other options and they may work better for some than Windows, and while Windows has its problems and does face challenges it still seems to endure.
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What other options for desktop PCs?

Linux? I use it for curiosity and because I like UNIX, but really, it is nearly the same mess it was a decade ago.
Apple? They barely make anything that qualifies as a desktop PC. They make niche machines with mostly laptop components.

It endures because it is a defacto monopoly. Ballmer can dither indecisively for decade and no worries because Microsoft is sitting on the two biggest monopolies in tech (Windows/Office). A virtual license to print money.
 
Snowdog said:
It endures because it is a defacto monopoly.
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True. I do find it interesting that some will say things like if Metro is forced on users tons of people will switch to OS X or Linux, not saying that you've said this.
 
heatlesssun said:
True. I do find it interesting that some will say things like if Metro is forced on users tons of people will switch to OS X or Linux, not saying that you've said this.
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Metro wont be forced on anyone, except people who purchase specific hardware (such as tablets) that come with Win8 installed and the hardware wont support anything else. For ordinary desktop users at home and in the office, Microsoft can't force shit.
 
Monkey God said:
Metro wont be forced on anyone, except people who purchase specific hardware (such as tablets) that come with Win8 installed and the hardware wont support anything else. For ordinary desktop users at home and in the office, Microsoft can't force shit.
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Just repeating what a lot Metro opponents are saying. If you don't want Windows 8, use Windows 7. Or Linux or OS X.
 
heatlesssun said:
True. I do find it interesting that some will say things like if Metro is forced on users tons of people will switch to OS X or Linux, not saying that you've said this.
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I think people will do what they did with Vista: Insist on getting a machine with the old OS, instead of the new OS. Maybe some will delay purchases hoping things get sorted more to their liking.

It is nearly irrelevant to Microsoft bottom line. Buy Win8 or buy Win7, this will be the choice for many and it will be just as much money for Microsoft either way. But I do expect it will show in lesser Win8 sales figures and a slower transition.

No matter how relatively rejected Win8 gets, MS will tout the great success, just like they did with Vista, before they brushed it under the rug for Win7.

There simply is no real alternative OS for desktop hardware. The desktop buyer is going run Windows in such an overwhelming majority that alternatives are more of a statistical anomaly, than a threat. More people likely believe Vampires are real, than believe in Linux on the desktop.

If I was buying a new desktop, I would be looking Win7 while available, but if it wasn't I would be hacking Win8 to banish Metro and return the start menu. But I wouldn't be running Linux as my main OS(Kludgy), or buying an iMac.

Now if pigs started flying and Apple released a decently priced mini-tower I might entertain that idea, but that really isn't part of this reality.
 
I believe Microsoft has some tricks of its sleeves that we haven't been made aware of just yet, and I'm quite positive that one thing that's coming is a price for Windows 8 (in retail channels) that people aren't going to be expecting - Ballmer is odd, sure, but he knows more than any of us so it's easy to speculate how Microsoft intends to have half a billion people running Windows 8 by the end of 2013.

They'll give it away if they must, and it won't hurt 'em at all either.
 
Tiberian said:
I believe Microsoft has some tricks of its sleeves that we haven't been made aware of just yet, and I'm quite positive that one thing that's coming is a price for Windows 8 (in retail channels) that people aren't going to be expecting - Ballmer is odd, sure, but he knows more than any of us so it's easy to speculate how Microsoft intends to have half a billion people running Windows 8 by the end of 2013.

They'll give it away if they must, and it won't hurt 'em at all either.
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Of all of the criticisms aimed at Microsoft and Ballmer, one thing is certain, they very aware of the unpopularity of Windows 8 and Metro specifically in the Internet pundit world. All they have to do is look at their Building Windows 8 Blog and read the comments. Hell, Steven Sinofsky himself has even made remarks about number of negative comments on the blog.

There's a lot more of the Windows 8 story to be told and Microsoft with Sinofsky at the helm of Windows development has tended to be very tight lipped about things so we really don't know exactly how this will all play out. Microsoft have never actually formally said that there's wouldn't be a more classic UI option. Indeed if they did have something in mind in that regard it was probably best to not say much about it to get the attention on Metro, though I pretty much don't that Metro is going to be an easily switchable option.
 
I dont think they will sell even close to that. People are generally happy with Windows 7
 
What's Steve Ballmer going to do if Microsoft sells only, say 300 million copies of Windows 8 next year?

Laugh all the way to the bank.
 
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