We are hearing from local dealers in the United Kingdom that Windows 8 sales are not as strong as expected. This verifies the news earlier this week that American retail tech giant Newegg have said that Windows 8 sales are ‘slow going'.
Our reports from various sources in the United Kingdom indicate that sales of Windows 8 are slower than those of Windows 7 when it was released. Sources didn't want to be named, however one told us that new systems with Windows 8 installed are slow in moving. When we asked about the interface concerns, he told us that customers are finding the tile interface bewildering on the desktop platform.
Newegg went on the record earlier this week confirming that sales were bad, a move that Microsoft wouldn't be too happy with. Merle McIntosh, Newegg's senior vice president of product management said in an interview with ReadWrite “We were prepared for some pretty big upside on the software side of the equation, and the hardware side of the equation, and it is has been steadily improving. But it did not explode, as I think you know, coming out of the gate. On the software side it has been slow going, and I think it will be that way until the pricing normalizes sometime next year.”
Rumours indicate that Newegg have only sold around half of their stock of Windows 8 discs. When Windows 7 was released it was a different story, as the discs were selling out as soon as they arrived into the stores.
Industry sources do add that Windows 7 sales were very strong due to the troubled Windows Vista, which was not a particularly popular Microsoft operating system. Windows 7 hardware is still arriving with stores however as they anticipate strong sales will continue, even with Windows 8 released.
Kitguru says: Have Microsoft dropped the ball? Will the release of Windows 9 be another ‘fix' for a previous operating system that wasn't well received? Only time will tell.
They really needed to just have a detection system when it was installing, if it detected a desktop CPU, ditch the tiles and put in a f*cking start menu.
Windows was long overdue a complete overhaul. 7 Was a minor upgrade at best, it created a problem for every one it fixed; it’s UI is in many ways a lot more effort than XP and some of the rearrangement is without thought or reason. But 8 is not what was needed for desktops, a totally mental idea – just another tedious derivative, obsolete before it was even launched. The guy that called it “Window” was spot on.