Windows 8 has been out for a month and half now, and although sales reports have indicated sluggishness, we can’t conclusively say yet whether it’s a success or failure.
Microsoft did announce it has sold 40 million Windows 8 licenses, but that represents the number of Windows 8 PCs shipped to retailers or distributors, not the number of people who have bought Windows 8.
Adoption among businesses and consumers will take time because Windows 8 is a multi-faceted OS designed for both touch tablets and PCs (and smartphones via Windows Phone 8). Microsoft itself has even admitted that Windows 8 adoption will require patience.
For enterprises, the OS will slowly be integrated with existing Windows 7 machines. For example, a Windows 8 tablet could possibly be the traveling companion to a worker’s Windows 7 desktop PC.
It’s way too early to throw around Vista taunts. Plus, it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison. The time of Vista’s arrival in early 2007 and its flaws — resource-intensive, incompatibility with Windows XP applications, sluggish performance — have very little in common with Windows 8, which is speedy and compatible with Windows 7 but arguably has more at stake trying to be a game-changer in the tablet era.
About the only thing Vista and Windows 8 have in common is they both followed successful operating systems — XP and Windows 7 respectively. Vista failed on a grand scale but was buffeted by XP as a fallback and Windows 7 as a welcome upgrade.
Can Microsoft Survive If Windows 8 Fails?
Windows 8 Tablets Not Expected to Be Major Player Until 2016
Windows 8 has cast a wider net and must conquer new and successful categories that didn’t exist in Vista’s day — namely, tablets and smartphones. Windows 8 tablets are available as consumer oriented ARM-based devices running Windows RT, or as Intel-based, enterprise-friendly devices running Windows 8 Pro which can be managed by IT departments.
With that said, Windows 8 does have the potential to fail big in a Vista-like way, and it won’t get the pass that Vista got. It will lose out on the competitive tablet market and likely never get it back. Vista was solely a desktop operating system and could be reborn through Windows 7, which did the same thing but better. Vista could fail and not lose new markets; Windows 8 does not have that luxury.
A new CIO.com story worth reading by Paul Rubens outlines the consequences for Microsoft if Windows 8 fails to be a tablet contender. The worst case scenario: Microsoft’s entire Windows enterprise strategy could go to pieces.
From the article:
“If neither [Windows 8 tablets or Windows Phone] take off then Microsoft will be left with a desktop operating system with a user interface that has no reason to exist — one that has been adopted to match a tablet and phone user interface that no one is interested in. ‘If enterprises are slow to adopt Windows 8 tablets or don’t see the value proposition then that whole strategy is at risk,’ says Forrester senior analyst David Johnson.”