Windows 8 Blamed For Biggest PC Shipment Plunge Ever

Zarathustra[H];1039788989 said:
Saying that the economy has not impacted tablet/smartphone sales is a completely unverifiable statement to make, as no one knows what those sales would have looked like if the market had not crashed. Chances are very good they would have been even higher.

The downturn in PC sales is almost exclusively due to people and businesses making due with what they have in the face of income insecurity.
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The problem with PC sales is that tablet and smartphone sales are doing extremely well, and like you've mentioned, could potentially have been doing even better.

It's not solely the economic downturn to blame here, just as it isn't only Win8. Even in regions where there has been little economic impact the sales have gone down, and whether Microsoft released an awesome version of Windows the sales still would have slumped. There's no doubt that they both impacted PC sales, but so has the current software landscape; why do you need to buy new hardware? You and I might, but what about the average user? Do they even need a new PC? Then there's also cannibalization. A lot of users don't even need a desktop or a laptop. At all. They can get by quite fine with just a tablet. Do they need a PC at all? And what about the price? Intel charges ~$200 for a mobile i5 (and laptops comprise >2/3s of all PCs sold). That's as much as a new Android tablet and for not much more you can get an iPad Mini. You get more "apps" and the display is going to be way better. Do you really need 500GB of storage? What if you've already bought into the Android/iOS ecosystem and have everything synchronized?

Blaming the economic downturn alone is as idiotic as blaming only Windows 8.
 
Steve said:
Companies are laying off at record rates, they are cutting spending everywhere they can and delaying upgrades as long as they possibly can to help their bottom line. Hell, companies like Sony are selling whole BUILDINGS to make a profit.
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You have to remember employment doesn't necessarily track with IT spending. Companies are doing more with less that is definitely true. But they are also investing more in IT.

Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.7 trillion in 2013, a 4.2 percent increase from 2012 spending of $3.6 trillion, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc. The 2013 outlook for IT spending growth in U.S. dollars has been revised upward from 3.8 percent in the 3Q12 forecast.
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http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2292815

The problem isn't that people aren't spending money or investing in IT. It's that desktops in particular aren't selling. If an iPad which cost the same as a laptop is surging year over year, as are smartphones it's kind of hard to say, "well the economy is only bad for Microsoft but it's not their fault." Especially since an iPad or a smartphone is far more of a luxury item. In a bad economy that stuff is usually the first to go.

There is a reason why every Windows 8 thread goes for pages, post after post. It's pretty obvious while it works for some there's a good amount of people it doesn't work for. If an iPad can be a must have item for $500 there's no reason why Microsoft Surface can't be one as well... or any Microsoft tablet for that matter....or phone (there's a trend here). The problem is that Windows 8 isn't a must have item by anyone's imagination. It was what 30 bucks for months and it didn't sell. That is a problem for Microsoft and there's not anything anyone can do about it unfortunately.
 
pelo said:
Blaming the economic downturn alone is as idiotic as blaming only Windows 8.
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As idiotic, probably not. Because when people are less secure about money, they simply buy less of everything. Tons of people get phones for very little or no money as part of their cell phone bills. If people had to put up front $500 or more for phones, I guarantee they'd be seeing a similar fate as PCs, their sales would not be increasing dramatically with near certainty.

Plus even IDC didn't offer any kind of numbers as to just how many people aren't buying PCs because of Windows 8, and they didn't offer really any argument that putting back the Start Button/Menu would have increased sales significantly.

The IDC statement headline is mostly click bait. Not saying that their numbers are accurate but a report that goes into multi-faceted reasoning as to the decline in PC sales would not draw nearly the attention as hating on Windows 8 does.
 
KENNYB said:
Nevermind "facts", Windows 8 eats babies and feeds the poop to puppies and then turns around and eats the puppies.
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LVGNE35Y6IVJCRD5TNI55ZUTTVBJ3DMR.jpeg


hotlinked
 
W8 is just a snappier, better performing W7. You can get rid of the so hated(for those who haven't tried it more than a day) Metro in a minute.This is just the same mindless, blind, retarded rage that had people elect EA as worst company of 2013, because they failed a game launch. I have no love for EA, but they didn't cause mass unemployment, wildlife massacres or environnemental annihilation like a lot of companies did. Haters gonna be retards, so the saying goes, or something close to that.
 
heatless, Microsoft hasn't released any sales figures at all. You can claim IDC figures aren't telling the whole story, but then Microsoft doesn't want the whole story outed either.

Mind you, these are shipments. This isn't even counting the sales! Who knows how bad those are going to be.
 
Its all Windows 8 fault...looks down at signature, nothing to see here, move along.
 
As we all know, unemployed people with no money to spare always buy new computer every year.

yeah, right.
 
So is there any way to even get Windows 8 Pro legally for less than $200 when upgrading from Vista or XP? :rolleyes:
 
I don't blame Win8 for the downturn because it's obvious that since the average consumer doesn't need anything more than a smartphone to do 95% of what they would do with a $750 PC, they have no need to buy one. However, Win8 didn't help matters any. People toying with the idea of springing for a PC and getting on one at their local Best Buy could easily be turned off by the new UI, lack of Start menu and everything else they're familiar with. While Metro is no big deal to us, it could be a big turn off to Joe Sixpack. I think the average PC consumer likes familiarity and Win8 could be a little too unfamiliar looking to attract somebody into spending $750 on something that they don't need cause they're iPhone can email and Facebook just fine.
 
Ah, so only 75% more PCs than tablets will be sold this year. Terrible, the winter is coming.
 
The only real trouble of Win8 is an UI one, and "not good enough to upgrade to it".

UI keeps it away from corporate, the other one keeps it away from most other users, simple as that, but marketeers will try to sell it to you with it's current flaws.
 
Just give me the option to turn off Metro and bring the Start button back and I'll get on board...I like the under hood changes. Otherwise no....
 
pelo said:
heatless, Microsoft hasn't released any sales figures at all. You can claim IDC figures aren't telling the whole story, but then Microsoft doesn't want the whole story outed either.

Mind you, these are shipments. This isn't even counting the sales! Who knows how bad those are going to be.
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I never said that the IDC figures were incorrect. They do exclude Windows 8 tablets and hybrids though they say that only is less than 2% of the market. I know you'd say that that's bad news on the tablet hybrid front and it is but how many Windows 8 tablets and hybrids models are out there compared to conventional hardware models. If tablets and hybrids are at around 2% in the first quarter that many OEMs had these devices on sale that's may be actually be showing tablets and hybrids outperforming conventional machines even at that 2% number. At any rate that 2% number is going to go up, how far it goes up will have much to do when the success or failure of 8.
 
Zarathustra[H];1039789045 said:
I have no interested in putting 8 on my desktop or laptop, but I have toyed with the idea of getting it for my HTPC I am building.

They only reason I haven't thus far? You need Windows 8 pro for Windows Media Center, and from what I can tell, even the upgrade version costs $200 :eek:

I can not justify spending $200 on an OS, when I have unused licenses for Vista and XP kicking around, or could run XBMC on linux instead...

The pricing is ridiculous.
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Well, if you didn't have your panties in a bunch, you could've bought it for $40 or $15 back in November/December/January. =) It also came with a free voucher for Media Center. You being a regular, I KNOW you knew about those deals during the times they were available. I do agree that now, I wouldn't even waste time looking at buying an OS outright post-discount/launch.
 
pcjunkie said:
Just give me the option to turn off Metro and bring the Start button back and I'll get on board...I like the under hood changes. Otherwise no....
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So being a computer enthusiast, the fact that you don't have these options available to you out of the box, makes you ignore all the under-the-hood advancements? As a PC enthusiast it really is too much trouble for you to download classic8 and be done with it?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but isn't a big part of being an enthusiast is to find work arounds and tweaks so you can customize your system however the hell you want? When did this become so troublesome, that it detracts away from the product as a whole?
 
Just FYI for anyone reading this with actual though capacity, do not offer a 3rd party app as a "fix" for Corporate.
3rd party is NEVER a "Fix" for a basic OS flaw, the fix is to tell the OS maker "fix this", simple as that.

BTW i am pretty sure that Samsung et all are even more pissed off at MS because MS must have promised something that they should have known was a lie, regarding revitalization of the PC Market and Windows 8, and it is obvious that true the economy has been bad (although it has been bad for quite a couple years), and Win8 did NOT help, but instead apparently it has accelerated the opposite.
 
Revdarian said:
Just FYI for anyone reading this with actual though capacity, do not offer a 3rd party app as a "fix" for Corporate.
3rd party is NEVER a "Fix" for a basic OS flaw, the fix is to tell the OS maker "fix this", simple as that.
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What you see as a flaw, others don't see as a flaw. Subjectivity and all that...
 
It would behoove them to also investigate other things, like separate PC part purchases etc. Just because pre-builts may be going down in number, doesn't mean PC use has decreased...
 
XamediX said:
So being a computer enthusiast, the fact that you don't have these options available to you out of the box, makes you ignore all the under-the-hood advancements? As a PC enthusiast it really is too much trouble for you to download classic8 and be done with it?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but isn't a big part of being an enthusiast is to find work arounds and tweaks so you can customize your system however the hell you want? When did this become so troublesome, that it detracts away from the product as a whole?
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When it became Windows 8 is when. And as an enthusiast unlike most people who don't know any better I can choose what I like or dislike and deal with the consequences. The under the hood changes are not good enough to offset what I dislike about Metro and even the normal desktop mode. I've tried 3rd party apps...bottom line is I shouldn't have to install 3rd party apps to customize for desktop use. Windows 7 is fine with me for the long term...if you don't like different peoples opinions then you can just #dealwithit.
 
XamediX said:
Well, if you didn't have your panties in a bunch, you could've bought it for $40 or $15 back in November/December/January. =) It also came with a free voucher for Media Center. You being a regular, I KNOW you knew about those deals during the times they were available. I do agree that now, I wouldn't even waste time looking at buying an OS outright post-discount/launch.
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I knew about them then, but that was before moving, and having to build a new HTPC box. :p

(Well, not entirely true, I was in the early stages of HTPC planning, and thought that XBMC on Linux was going to do everything I needed, which was wrong)
 
People seem to have a fairly grim view of the current global economic situation that doesn't appear to jive with reality in many respects. Apple's selling more iPads than ever, and the iPad — as much I like mine — is an absolute throwaway, toy product in so many respects. It doesn't hold that things are simply so bad that people are just locking up their wallets and throwing away the key.

Suffice it to say that the explanation that it's the economy responsible for the PC sales slump doesn't hold much water. I doubt it's mostly a function of Windows 8, though: more a function of a lot of consumers already have good PCs which do not require replacing. Windows 8 is a big change to Windows, but it's a small change to computing as a whole. IDC is right in the sense that the confusion about Windows 8 is probably hurting sales, but it's not clear what effect that's having on the numbers, making their conclusion fairly premature.

Microsoft's done a poor job communicating what Windows 8 is, and I don't doubt it's having a meaningful sales impact, but how that's affecting the PC industry is a difficult thing to put a finger on.
 
heatlesssun said:
I never said that the IDC figures were incorrect. They do exclude Windows 8 tablets and hybrids though they say that only is less than 2% of the market. I know you'd say that that's bad news on the tablet hybrid front and it is but how many Windows 8 tablets and hybrids models are out there compared to conventional hardware models. If tablets and hybrids are at around 2% in the first quarter that many OEMs had these devices on sale that's may be actually be showing tablets and hybrids outperforming conventional machines even at that 2% number. At any rate that 2% number is going to go up, how far it goes up will have much to do when the success or failure of 8.
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You're the LAST person who should be making predictions about Windows sales, you've been trying to pump sunshine up our collective butts since before it came out about how well Windows Phone was going to do and it is still sitting at sub-2% marketshare.

IDC says Windows tablets (RT&x86) are less than 1% of the market, even excluding hybrid numbers it's pretty safe to say that things are bad and with Microsoft's reputation getting worse and worse with each misstep and them losing more and more mindshare to Apple and Google it doesn't seem real likely that it will change anytime soon.

If they had numbers worth reporting Microsoft would have done so like they did with the (shipped) Windows 8 numbers, the fact that they haven't indicates that they're not likely to improve the outlook at all.
 
win8 has bad market perception. It's not about good or bad.
did they make some mistakes? i'd wager they did, and as such their view to joe user is again not favorable. therefore that *might* realistically account for a small dip in deskto/laptop sales.

that certainly doesn't tell the whole story. a global recession, slowing of perceived technological advances in the x86 space(grandma checking her email doesn't need an i7 or vishera, i'm sure she's doing fine on her core2duo or athlon x2), and things like subsidies for other devices in emerging marketplaces.

you need to use all the colours to paint a picture.

as for businesses, i've seen a lot either buying older gen refurbs/off leases, or just upgrading what they have.

my company IS buying, but that's because the s478 p4s they are using have become so inefficient they are losing more than upgrade cost in downtime and waiting for shit to work.
 
You know people keep saying how much snappier 8 is. Well I have test systems for some of my networks and I actually clocked 8 to be slower from start to desktop by a significant margin the 7. When your processing lots of GPO 8 is actually worse.
 
Zarathustra[H];1039788790 said:
My company is doing this btw.

They have ceased all computer upgrades of functioning units corporate wide, instead buying RAM upgrades for those who complain.

I'm on a 5 year old Centrino2 Dell laptop at work, and recently got upgraded from 2GB to 4GB. It's not perfect, but for MS Office, Web apps and statistical software, it does just fine. Why would they buy more computers?
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This right here is why sales are down. Instead of blaming Windows 8, they should be blaming the people that write the same software with a different splash screen and call it an upgrade every year. How much software requires more than 2 processors? Less than 1% I'd bet. How much software requires much more than Intel integrated graphics? Hardly any when looking at the vast software releases last year as a whole. So why do we need a new PC if what we have will run everything we throw at it? We don't so we can stay firm with what we already have.
 
wonderfield said:
People seem to have a fairly grim view of the current global economic situation that doesn't appear to jive with reality in many respects. Apple's selling more iPads than ever, and the iPad — as much I like mine — is an absolute throwaway, toy product in so many respects. It doesn't hold that things are simply so bad that people are just locking up their wallets and throwing away the key.
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*Looks down at 5 year old beaten up Dell Centrino2 in docking station*

Just because one particular product is selling well, does not mean that the economy is out of trouble.

While businesses are currently doing OK, a lot of that is due to efficiency improvements (or reduce headcount and make poor employees work 12 hour days with aging equipment to make up for it). Our consumer economy is doing poorly due to high unemployment, and this just seems to be getting worse, especially now with the sequester and the expiration of the income tax holiday.

The relative success of one product or one industry does not offset the miserable shape the rest of the economy is in.

Just because the Dow has recovered does not mean that people have, and in this sense, more than ever, corporations are certainly NOT people.
 
Zarathustra[H];1039789342 said:
*Looks down at 5 year old beaten up Dell Centrino2 in docking station*

Just because one particular product is selling well, does not mean that the economy is out of trouble.

While businesses are currently doing OK, a lot of that is due to efficiency improvements (or reduce headcount and make poor employees work 12 hour days with aging equipment to make up for it). Our consumer economy is doing poorly due to high unemployment, and this just seems to be getting worse, especially now with the sequester and the expiration of the income tax holiday.

The relative success of one product or one industry does not offset the miserable shape the rest of the economy is in.

Just because the Dow has recovered does not mean that people have, and in this sense, more than ever, corporations are certainly NOT people.
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It's a paper recovery...more jobs is what counts and that is not happening.
 
Zarathustra[H];1039789342 said:
*Looks down at 5 year old beaten up Dell Centrino2 in docking station*

Just because one particular product is selling well, does not mean that the economy is out of trouble.

While businesses are currently doing OK, a lot of that is due to efficiency improvements (or reduce headcount and make poor employees work 12 hour days with aging equipment to make up for it). Our consumer economy is doing poorly due to high unemployment, and this just seems to be getting worse, especially now with the sequester and the expiration of the income tax holiday.

The relative success of one product or one industry does not offset the miserable shape the rest of the economy is in.

Just because the Dow has recovered does not mean that people have, and in this sense, more than ever, corporations are certainly NOT people.
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I am so glad in am not an American. You guys fucked your selves.. I like the fact Canada has strict regulation for banks, it keeps them from nuking own economy.
 
SixFootDuo said:
If you speak with the sales people at Microcenter, especially in the laptop area, they will tell you their was steep drop-off in sales of laptops once they started shipping with Windows 8.
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I know a guy at the Tustin MC going back like 7 years and when I stopped by recently this very subject came up when I asked about a laptop, he said people arent really drawn to the Metro interface thats blaring out from every screen, theyll kind of press the keys to feel the typing, pick it up to see the weight, sometimes try to touch the tiles on the screen but ultimately don't linger, they "dont get too excited by it."

The big point that the apologists blaming PC sales solely on the economy and tablets seem to be ignoring is that with Win8 Microsoft had an opportunity to put the brakes on the decline of sales and give people a compelling reason to upgrade, instead they chose to go pedal to the metal by putting dealbreakers like Metro in place that would guarantee some of their biggest segments like Enterprise and business would avoid it at all costs. Their extreme iPad envy and overreaction became so strong that they let the MBA's and marketing majors take the company in the direction of trying to be someone else instead of just being themselves.

As I've mentioned, Microsoft picked the absolute worst time to be polarizing, now was not ideal.
 
Sounds overblown. Assuming Win8 is manifestly less popular than Win7 ceteris paribus (all other things the same--ignoring the economy), then sure, it has an impact.

But I'd bet the impact of Win8 is small compared to the impact of the economy. Correlation (of allegedly low Win8 satisfaction with low PC sales) is not automatic causation.

I know not liking Win8 caused me not to buy two licenses though :D
 
As far as sales figures go, Microsoft has publicly stated that it sold 40M license by November 2012 and sold over 60M by early January 2013. Roughly the same rate as Windows 7.

The difference? Windows 7 hit before the economic crisis and it is was a solid upgrade to Vista. And, whether you like Windows 8 or not, it couldn't have launched at a worse time. There is no real reason to upgrade right now, even if you have the money to do so.


*edit* this post was in reference to people claiming Microsoft hasn't released Windows 8 sales figures. The company have done so on several occasions.
 
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Not sure, I think its more of a anyone who has bout a decent laptop or desktop in the last 4-5 years is perfectly fine doing web browsing, word, excel etc. The only time its worth it to upgrade or buy a new one is if it broke, or you want to play games which the majority isnt doing. Almost everything runs fine except for games with my desktop and its 3 years old. But tablets and smartphones were slow as crap and so bad that every time people could they would buy a new one. Smartphones will get to the point where pcs are faster than pcs where people just cant see the difference in performance and features to want to upgrade.
 
Sorry Steve but that doesn't really fly in the sense that selling licenses is one thing, but actually using them is an entirely different kind of deal, and we know how bad is the real adoption rate of the OS.

Also, try and do that comparison again taking into account the price of Windows 7 vs the 15-40$ "ultra cheap" price of Windows 8 in that same time.
 
Revdarian said:
Sorry Steve but that doesn't really fly in the sense that selling licenses is one thing, but actually using them is an entirely different kind of deal, and we know how bad is the real adoption rate of the OS.

Also, try and do that comparison again taking into account the price of Windows 7 vs the 15-40$ "ultra cheap" price of Windows 8 in that same time.
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Sorry, that response was to someone claiming Microsoft hadn't released sales numbers. I'll edit my post to reflect that.
 
I no longer believe anyone blowing the horn for W8. They remind me of Baghdad Bob.
 
Do people in the real world even know about Windows 8?

I'd have pegged it as a combination of less disposable income, fairly stagnant technology, and the surge in the popularity of mobile platforms.
 
Zarathustra[H];1039789045 said:
I have no interested in putting 8 on my desktop or laptop, but I have toyed with the idea of getting it for my HTPC I am building.

They only reason I haven't thus far? You need Windows 8 pro for Windows Media Center, and from what I can tell, even the upgrade version costs $200 :eek:

I can not justify spending $200 on an OS, when I have unused licenses for Vista and XP kicking around, or could run XBMC on linux instead...

The pricing is ridiculous.
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Unfortunatly linux has terrible alternatives to media center. MythTV isn't as good as people make it out to be. Firstly is hardware compatibility, as lots of hardware won't work. Tv tuners analog rarely works, unless you have one of the few that do. Then there's the EPG which you have to pay for. There's no free altrnative. Finally it's a bitch to setup. To this day I can't figure out if I setup analog correctly. It doesn't work and I don't know why.
 
jstnomega said:
I no longer believe anyone blowing the horn for W8. They remind me of Baghdad Bob.
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Windows 8 has some great usage applications, and is a really good product...

...just not for laptops or desktops.

When the prices come down a bit, I may just pick up na X86 Windows 8 tablet. Windows 8 is brilliant here, and it seems pretty awesome for HTPC's as well.

Windows 8 isn't coming anywhere near my desktop or laptop though.
 
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