Remember when SemiAccurate said Microsoft had failed? Remember how Microsoft didn’t put out numbers for sales of Surface for good cause? Remeber how SemiAccurate said Windows 8 was destroying sales? Guess what just came out? More numbers.
Windows 8 is an unimaginably bad OS but you know that. How bad is it? According to no less than IDC’s VP of Clients and Displays it flat-out killed the market. No really, the exact quote is, “At this point, unfortunately, it seems clear that the Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market“. How slow? A hair under 14% worldwide.
This shouldn’t shock any SemiAccurate readers, we told you why Surface could not succeed, we detailed why Microsoft had failed not will fail, why OEMs are running for the hills in ways never before seen, and many many more.
Of course Microsoft’s paid press and apologists swarmed out and claimed everything from the numbers not being out to it being all about the economy. The first numbers came out a long time ago and they backed SemiAccurate up. Since then things have gotten worse and Microsoft still won’t offer internal data to refute the now thoroughly backed up allegations, no points if you can guess why. The economy claims were shot down with ease though, tablets were booming and most cost significantly more than a laptop PC. Microsoft was smart enough to leave that brilliant logic to proxies though, the slower ones at that.
“Try it and you will like it” was often bandied about too. People tried it and the foresight of the EULA authors precludes those trialling it from getting their money back. No one likes it. As SemiAccurate repeatedly said, Microsoft is desperately trying to leverage their Windows desktop monopoly into the phone space. We said it would fail. It did. We said it would hurt their desktop business, we underestimated the damage. We said PC partners were literally dumping Microsoft. Everyone thought we meant tablets and WART. We didn’t. The walls they built to lock customers in are now far more effective at keeping them out and Microsoft is desperately but ineffectually flailing. Game over, told ya so.S|A
Charlie Demerjian
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