
After 15 months, Windows 8 has sold 100 million fewer copies than Windows 7 did - jonathansizz
http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2014/02/13/15-months-windows-8-sold-100-million-fewer-copies-windows-7
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dangrossman
First 15 months sales:

* Windows 8: 200 million

* Windows 7: 300 million

* Windows Vista: ~128 million

* Windows XP: ~120 million (based on an IDC estimate, as Microsoft released few early sales figures for XP).

It looks to me like Windows 7 was the anomaly: a stronger PC market at the
time, and 8+ years worth of computers running XP looking for an upgrade. Vista
was not a realistic option mainly due to a lack of drivers at release, much
higher system requirements, and absurd pricing-- up to $359 for a boxed copy.
By the time Windows 7 came out, manufacturers had gotten around to creating
the Vista drivers that'd also work in 7, computers that would've been sluggish
in Vista could easily run 7, and the price of the OS was slashed.

Getting people and businesses to upgrade again when they just did so in the
past few years is a tougher sell. The hardware available at the release of
Windows 8 was pretty un-exciting too, which probably contributed to 2013's
record-breaking decline in PC sales overall. Only in the past 3-4 months have
the updated models from most manufacturers made it into stores --
touchscreens, new form factors and doubled battery life -- reasons for people
to actually want to buy a new PC.

~~~
arocks
Windows 7 is not an anomaly, the OS sales numbers should be on an increasing
trend. Windows 8 is the anomaly that is comparable to the failure of Vista. I
am pretty sure that they could have achieved a sales better than Windows 7, if
the product was really compelling.

Unlike in the past, the OS upgrade cycle has shortened considerably thanks to
mobile devices. People don't really mind upgrading their OS even though
Windows users might be more reluctant than others. But I am sure that the
Windows 8 user interface changes are the real reason why most people would not
even want to upgrade.

~~~
btian
Why should OS sales numbers be on increasing trend when PC shipment is on
decreasing trend?

~~~
millstone
Said trend may be partly explained by Windows 8.

------
leobelle
I recently bought the first Windows computer I have had in years. It came with
Windows 8. What a disaster. In a few days I upgraded to Windows 8.1 which made
things a bit better. You can right click on a start menu button and pretty
much get a much reduced functional start menu and boot into desktop mode by
default.

I'm glad Microsoft is backtracking on this. What they did was bold, but the
product they forced down everyone's throat was just so terrible. Maybe it was
innovative, but so much functionality and customizability was stripped. The
Windows Store is a joke. I hate metro apps, I hate that Skype is a metro app,
it's the only one I use and it bugs me that I can't put it on the desktop
somewhere. I just want metro to go away forever.

Luckily under the hood is still that vaunted desktop Windows from old. It just
needs to come back as soon as possible.

~~~
sequence7
Could you explain what it is that you actually hate about Windows 8? I keep on
seeing this sentiment and I just don't get it. I've been using it since it was
released and it just feels like 7 with a flatter desktop and a different start
menu. I get that a lot of people lost their minds when there wasn't a button
that you could click to get to the start menu but since that's been added in
8.1 if you want to completely ignore the new UI you pretty much can.

Is it just the fact that things have changed that causes all the hate or is
there some rational explanation that I'm completely missing? You're right the
Windows Store is pretty feeble but if you hate it's easy to ignore.

~~~
leobelle
Death by a thousand cuts.

What I hate is moving my mouse to the corner by accident during a DayZ fire
fight and windows charms covering up my screen.

What I hate about Windows 8 is having 3 or 4 different settings panes.

What I hate about Windows 8 is having to relearn how to open up settings.

What I hate about Windows 8 is that it has two kinds of applications, from
apparently two different universes and they can't interact, or if they can I
can't figure it out. I just pretend one of them doesn't exist.

What I hate about Windows 8 is that I have to right click on start button.

What I hate about Windows 8 is that if I want to hit a keyboard short cut that
requires the windows key and I make a mistake I'm looking at the Metro screen.

When it comes to Metro I hate everything about it, including the little tiny
arrow on the bottom right that brings up a second start menu like thing. The
little label-less arrows that take you to some kind of app view that's
littered with every exe on the computer and scrolls horizontally. Have you
seen the way the windows selection charm works? You drag your mouse into the
top corner, then drag down to see all the open applications, this list also
includes metro applications. The Windows 8 search thing is not even remotely
as good as the old Windows 7 search in the start menu and it's only available
in metro.

I can go on but I'm tired of being angry and annoyed.

~~~
sequence7
> What I hate is moving my mouse to the corner by accident during a DayZ fire
> fight and windows charms covering up my screen.

Turn off corner navigation.

> What I hate about Windows 8 is that it has two kinds of applications, from
> apparently two different universes and they can't interact, or if they can I
> can't figure it out. I just pretend one of them doesn't exist.

Metro and desktop applications can and do happily interact, I don't understand
what you mean here.

> What I hate about Windows 8 is that I have to right click on start button

Why do you have to? You get a menu if you do but you don't have to, you used
to get a menu if you right clicked the start button in Windows 7

> You drag your mouse into the top corner, then drag down to see all the open
> applications, this list also includes metro applications.

Just use Alt-Tab it works like it always has, you don't even need to see Metro

> The Windows 8 search thing is not even remotely as good as the old Windows 7
> search

Here I have to respectfully disagree, IMHO the search in 8 is way better than
in 7

Without wanting to make you even more angry and annoyed every one of the other
issues seems to basically boil down to things have changed a bit and I don't
like change.

~~~
collyw
There are whole host of stupid defaults. It ridiculous to say "just turn them
off" or adjust that setting.

Installing Linux on a laptop recently was a pain thanks to the secure boot
nonsense, but I got there. Using windows while before getting it installed was
terrible. There is a whole load of unintuitive stuff (closing a fullscreen app
by dragging it down? That's obvious!).

It takes 3 or 4 actions to shut the computer down if I remember correctly -
find the charm menu, click it, click shutdown, confirm. There are some
gestures (I still don't know what) that flip between the start menu and the
app you are on. So you end up clicking an app in the start menu, moving to the
part of the screen you want to click, and trigger the gesture t go back to the
start menu. The whole experience was awful (and I was only really using the
computer for surfing the web for articles about dual booting Linux with secure
boot).

One thing I am really enjoying about Linux just now, is that no matter what
crap gets shoved onto the latest and greatest desktop, I can choose a
different one. Xfce is currently very nice. Feels like what windows XP did.

~~~
dserban
> "Installing Linux on a laptop recently was a pain thanks to the secure boot
> nonsense, but I got there."

Is it easier if you just temporarily remove the HDD, boot the laptop, get
thrown into the UEFI settings, remove the unwanted crypto key, then put the
HDD back in again? I was thinking about doing that the last time someone asked
me to install Linux on their secureboot laptop.

------
sjwright
Windows 7 was the first compelling upgrade of Windows in over eight years, it
pretty much works, and it was a necessary upgrade to properly take advantage
of 64 bit computing.

Windows 8 is a customer-hostile mess that adds very little to the Windows 7
formula.

~~~
nly
> and it was a necessary upgrade to properly take advantage of 64 bit
> computing.

Huh? I ran Windows XP x64 Edition with no problems before Vista even arrived.

~~~
hobs
A LOT of drivers were not available for xp 64, otherwise you are right, it was
just fine.

~~~
sjwright
Yep, hence why I qualified it with _properly._

------
joshmn
Kind of misleading. Let us not forget that people were coming from the
shitshow that was Vista (before all the service packs / hotfixes were applied)
or XP if they didn't get Vista. The latter made people long overdue for an
overhaul.

------
bruceb
Well there is also no need to upgrade for a lot of people. A dual core/quad
core computer with windows 7 it can run office, media, and the internet
perfectly fine and pretty fast. This is what most people use computer for. So
Windows 8 need not be bad for it not to be purchased it is just that it is not
needed.

------
damian2000
Not sure how widespread this is, but in my own experience businesses are
actively avoiding buying or upgrading to Windows 8.

~~~
pessimizer
A lot of businesses jumped from XP to 7. Maybe Microsoft has a chance to hold
on to them if 9 isn't garbage. Scarily, I also see a possibility that business
start jumping ship to Apple, Ubuntu and/or some Google ChromeOS offering on
the desktop, and Active Directory, Exchange, and MSSQL servers the last
remnants of Microsoft operating systems in the enterprise.

Granted, I think it's a slim chance, and I might be crazy.

~~~
toyg
Apple, yes (through BYO and the iPhone/iPad trojan horses). The rest, probably
not. Any large business with an IT department worth its salt would steer well
clear of "supportless" nonstandard oddities like ChromeOS.

~~~
pessimizer
But a googleOS that just connects to google services, supplimented with a few
apps? I could see that making headway in small businesses.

------
midnitewarrior
I think these numbers are a testament to how good Windows 7 is. There was
definitely a compelling reason to upgrade to Windows 7 from Vista, but, with
Windows 7 being so good, Windows 8 is a tough sell for some consumers.

In my experience, Windows 7 has been more stable than Windows 8. For average
users, there's no real reason to upgrade.

------
blinkingled
It almost sounds like Microsoft would be better off adopting the Ubuntu model
- two consumer releases supported for a shorter period followed by one long
term supported Pro release. The consumer release can be priced to sell the pro
one can retain today's Windows 8 Pro pricing.

The consumer release can push the boundaries in terms of features and
experimentation, while the pro release can pickup stabilized Pro centric
features and security updates from it.

While they are at it they can also deemphasize Metro from the Pro edition,
leaving it as a mostly consumer feature.

------
EEGuy
What I'd like to see in the next iteration of Windows is desktop application
windows that are /scalable/, as in the "pinch to zoom" on smartphones, but
mouseable.

On Windows' windows, all four corners presently control clipping. Two of those
four could be devoted to scaling instead of clipping.

This is something a desktop OS could do to increase my productivity. One
desktop /application/, Real VNC Viewer, does this -- and I find it very
convenient.

------
uvTwitch
Much of an improvement that Windows 8 is, this doesn't surprise me - There is
no -need- to upgrade to it over Windows 7. It's not like the difference
between XP and 7, where users were upgrading from an ageing buggy mess (or in
the case of upgrades from vista, just a buggy mess).

------
higherpurpose
The decline of Windows has begun, and this time Windows is not coming back (in
a strong way).

~~~
EpicEng
XP sold 120 million in the same time period. Care to explain your view?

~~~
hijinx
In 2001 the PC install base was less than a 10th of what it is today. Raw
sales are kind of a terrible comparison. Relevant to MS's revenue, sure, but
not a good means of comparison. The better comparison would be the relative
market share. I haven't seen numbers, but I would guess that XP's market share
was substantially better than W8's over the same duration, even if only
considering PCs operating on Windows.

~~~
EpicEng
I'm kind of curious about that number and how it was obtained. Do you have a
link? I couldn't find anything good.

~~~
hijinx
I am going to have to recant I guess. Quickly looking through the IDC,
Gartner, World Bank and Strategy Analytics numbers, I can't find something to
cite. If you look at global device shipment numbers from 1996 - 2013 and plot
shipments per year with a 5 year tailing use to estimate the user base (which
seems the norm for the PC user base values) it seems like 15-20% would be
closer to the average, not 10% like I stated. I doubt it's important enough to
either of us to spend the time to it. ;)

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jonathansizz
Whatever the larger significance, surely these sales figures represent
billions of lost dollars (or dollars not earned) for Microsoft?

EDIT: to downvoters - I'm just assuming that Microsoft make at least tens of
dollars per licence sold. Am I wrong?

