by JRNYMAN » Mon Oct 29, 2012 4:36 pm
Followed the development and roll-out of W8 very closely if for no other reason than to see how HUGE of a plunge Microsoft's stock and ultimately their overall place in the tech world is going to fall. It doesn't take a genius to realize the definition of "personal computing" has and continues to change due to the enormous appeal and seemingly limitless capabilities of smart phones and tablets. The sale of PC's have plummeted by over 70% in the past 24 mos. with the majority of desktop sales attributed to businesses and municipalities. Sales of laptops went very soft about a year ago but saw a boost in sales in the 30 days prior to schools reconvening. That small burst in sales did almost nothing to reduce the large overstock of inventory mfrs. currently have. If you haven't watched the sales ads for Fry's Electronics, Best Buy, etc. over the past 3-4 months take a look at today's ads and you'll be shocked at how drastically reduced prices are for very decent laptops.
Microsoft saw the shift in what consumers were spending money on and continued to spend it on as the smart phone wave grew. Steve Ballmer met with the top developers and strategists at MS and together they saw the writing on the wall: The personal computer as we knew it is no longer the king of consumer technology and their Windows phone didn't receive the warm welcome they thought it would by the general public. In an almost desperate effort to keep their product viable and relevant Ballmer decided they needed an interface that would bring all the devices under one GUI and instructed his team to come up with an OS that would enable the end user to go from their phone to their tablet to their computer cross platform and operate and interface with them exactly the same way. What they came up with was Windows 8.
Unless you are one of those consumers who wants an OS that looks, feels, works, and smells the same across all your devices and you really like the clumsiness and aesthetic marvel of 8's GUI, there's really no benefit to converting.
Microsoft is betting the farm that Windows 8 will be the golden egg that keeps them atop the tech world and in my opinion, they chose the wrong path to do so. The long, hard fall of the once uber-colossal-giant of their industry is happening before our very eyes. Sure, their other end user products are and will continue to be mainstays in the industry, i.e., Office.... or will it? Oracle has hurt sales of MS Office dramatically with their open source and completely free office suite, Open Office which looks and feels exactly like MS Office and even lets you save your respective documents, presentations, etc. in MS format.
It will be interesting to see where Microsoft is a year from now.