Over 100 days have passed since Microsoft released it’s new Windows 8 to mainly-lukewarm reaction.
Three months later, sales worldwide still haven’t got the boost that the company must’ve been hoping for.
A recent report by Net Applications shows that the market share of Windows 8 stands at 2.26% worldwide compared to 44.48% of Windows 7, 39.51% of Windows XP and 2.44 percent of Mac OS X 10.8.
The market share is up from 1.72% which it had in December. Compared to Windows 7, which got 10% market share after six months, the sales are still lesser.
However, it must be noted that the 2.26% figure amounts to several million PCs so it’s not that bad when it comes to numbers.
Microsoft has revealed that it has sold 60 million Windows 8 licenses so far.
What went wrong?
Although Microsoft seems happy with these figures, they must be a bit worried on how the sales are turning out to be. The figures are apparently low due to the lack of low-end Windows 8 systems available right now. Also, a lot of people don’t seem to like Metro especially when used with a keyboard and mouse, which does feel a bit awkward.
Another reason for the lackluster outcome might’ve been the fact that Windows 7 is still going pretty well after all and it runs smoothly on low to mid-end and more affordable machines.
Its not that Windows 8 costs an arm-and-a-leg right now but still Windows 7 is just fine for average users and still works well like any normal system with a keyboard and mouse. Did I mention the lack of a traditional Start Menu in Windows 8?
Windows 7 goes down, XP upwards
As expected, Windows 8 seems to have eroded the Windows 7 market share. It now stands at 44.48% compared to the 45.11% it had in December last year. Windows XP, however has shown an upward trend as it saw its market share increase a bit. Vista saw its share drop to a measly 5.24%. That wasn’t unexpected.
What this means is that although they’ve sold 60 million of Windows 8s so far, Microsoft still has got a longer way to go especially when it comes to convincing old customers who don’t want to bid farewell to the traditional start menu and desktop environments.
windows xp is still in top. I think windows 8 will get lead after 2 to 3 years
By that time you might be hearing about Windows 9 or 10!
Using Windows 8 and lovin it.
they are releasing operating systems very quickly . how can customers switch over so quickly speacially when it involves cost as well
They’re not forcing to do so! a’re they?
I still wouldn’t install this abomination of an OS, even if it was offered for free -__-
Windows 8 Rocks!
i was facing problems with low RAM.. just added 1 GB today and enjoying win 8… it’s cool….
I personally think that windows 8 is gonna get the boost soon i know the percentage is pretty low.. but its not gonna be a problem for windows 8 to surpass the number of windows 7 users…. because we know that windows 8 requires the same hardware as windows 7 asks… users just need a lil time