I can’t help but feel that Windows 8 is the tortoise in the old story of the tortoise and the hare. No one thought that the turtle had a chance in heck, but the turtle was persistent. It didn’t care what onlookers thought. And what happened?
Slow and steady wins the race. Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 both continue to gain support. While Windows 8’s level of growth hasn’t been quick and has been met with quite a bit of criticism– that doesn’t stop the fact that it IS growing.
Honestly I personally believe Windows 8 COULD NOT have done any better at first than it is. No form of marketing, no form of PR stunts or even brainwashing. The changes in Windows 8 were big and they weren’t going to be accepted easily.
For Microsoft it was about getting the foot in the door with Windows 8. Plain and simple.
Now I don’t feel the same about Windows RT and the Surface, I think they COULD have been a much bigger hit, but that’s a rant for a different day.
Back to the point, Windows 8 now has grown to 2.26% of the PC OS marketshare. Even more interestingly, for the first time Windows 7 has seen a decline in sales, dropping from 45.11% to 44.48%. Next Vista has just 5.24% and Windows XP managed to GAIN .43 percent coming up to 39.51%.
Based on these numbers, Windows 8 is beginning to grow by taking share away from Windows 7. That’s a good thing. While we’d rather see Windows Vista and XP’s share going to Windows 8– this is still a positive move.
What do you think of Windows 8’s growth so far? Is there anything Microsoft could have done to speed things up (while keeping Metro) or was the dramatic Start UI destined to have a slow start no matter how the company presented it? Share your thoughts below.
All Comments
As Win7 is a very stable OS, win8 is born to a slow growth no matter how good it is. When XP support expires, win8 will get a bigger boost as it doesn’t make sense to upgrade to win7 as win8 has everything that win7 has and more.