14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft doesn’t talk too much about Windows 8’s sales performance, but CEO Steve Ballmer announced a couple of weeks ago that his company managed to sell a total of 40 million copies in just a single month.
While these figures do not help us determine whether Windows 8 has failed to reach internal sales projections or not, some industry officials claim that Microsoft’s new OS would most likely take off anytime soon.
Rekuram Vardharaj, marketing director, enterprise solutions and growth markets, Dell India, told CIOL.com that Windows 8 was generating “latent interest,” but it’s pretty clear that some consumers still need time to get used to it.
“It's a huge thing and a lot of product launches related to it or extended from it, are coming out at great speed. Specially in the mid market, I hear a lot of software as well as hardware change being caused by it,” Vardharaj said in an interview.
“The effect, however, would be more pronounced as some time passes. It is an infinite shift and is striking the right chords but people will take time to get familiar as should be expected in any adoption cycle. There is a lot of latent interest that this launch is triggering though.”
Windows 8 continues to be deemed a confusing operating system and many analysts explain that all GUI changes could be at fault for the poor sales performance.
Of course, the lack of a Start menu remains the biggest problem for a surprising number of consumers, even though Microsoft has shown absolutely no interest to bring back this traditional Windows feature.
Instead, company officials have hinted that it’s all just a matter of time until everybody gets used to the Start Screen, explaining that exactly the same problem was encountered a long time ago when Windows 95 hit the market with a Start button.