14 DAY TRIAL // It’s not yet released, but Windows 8 is already regarded as one of the products that will most likely fail to impress.
Alan Rifkin, retail analyst at Barclays Bank PLC, told the Wall Street Journal that Windows 8 has slight chances to impress in the current market conditions and said that it would most likely fail to impress in the business market.
What’s more, Rikin compared Windows 8 to the utterly popular iPhone and said that, unlike the Apple device, it doesn’t have the power to rock the world after it gets generally available.
“This is not the new Apple iPhone with people lining up for the new product,” Rifkin said pointing to Microsoft’s Surface reservation passes that require users to get in line on October 26 at noon to get a tablet.
“What typically happens is that businesses will buy it, people will get comfortable with it and then they will buy it.”
Windows 8 will go on sale on Friday and unlike analysts, Microsoft’s officials have very high expectations from the company’s new operating system.
Steve Ballmer himself said that Windows 8 is very likely to change the world and even suggested that the launch scheduled to take place on October 25 in New York is at least as important as Windows 95’s debut.
Windows 8 won’t be aimed at traditional desktop computers exclusively, but also at tablet devices and mobile phones. Windows RT, the tablet-optimized Windows 8, will debut on Friday on Microsoft’s first tablet ever, called Surface.