"Google has revealed that it has no plans to develop dedicated apps for Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8 for its business app products such as Gmail or Drive." Product management director for Google Apps, Clay Bavor, told V3 that Google "will go where the users are but they are not on Windows Phone or Windows 8". Ouch - but for now, hard to argue with.
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Member since:2011-05-14
"but Windows 8 sold a ton of licenses to date"
Microsoft is known for inflating sales figures in an effort to generate hype. For example, see Vista.
Now that being said, assuming MS isn't tampering with numbers again and that they actually have sold 40 million licenses or whatever they claim, one has to remember that a lot of that, probably in the area of 3/4's of that figure, is for OEM. Now assuming that 3/4's is fairly accurate, that means they've really only sold 10 million licenses via retail. Now assume that roughly half of those sold by retail just wanted to try 8 and ended up downgrading <really an upgrade> back to whatever they were using. probably 3 to 5 million people using windows 8 vs 10's of millions using 7/xp/OSX/linux/bsd/whatever isn't a huge user base.
Edited 2012-12-14 16:01 UTC
Member since:2005-07-07
The numbers from MS was 4 million upgrades in the first 4 days. Obviously, that number has increased exponentially since then. According to Steam, Windows 8 usage share on their platform has already surpassed OSX.
There is very little reason to doubt that Windows 8 will have a very large market share (much larger than OSX).
Member since:2012-09-21
Microsoft is known for inflating sales figures in an effort to generate hype. For example, see Vista.
Stats from NetMarketShare (and the like) disagree with you. Already at 1.41% after only 5 weeks. Will overtake Linux at 1.45% which had a 20 year head start.
http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qp...
Edited 2012-12-14 17:58 UTC
Member since:2008-07-15
That in no way says how many actual users there are. The majority of Windows 8 sales have been to OEMs for computers the OEMs are selling. Microsoft, of course, counts those in their overall sales numbers as they should, but those numbers say nothing concerning what happens to those copies of Windows 8 after the OEMs acquire it. Do the users run it? Do they take advantage of a Windows 7 downgrade license instead, or even wipe the OEM Windows and use their own os (be it a clean copy of Windows or another)? Have said machines even been purchased yet? Proof of licenses, in Microsoft's case, does not translate into proof of a significant user base.
Member since:2005-11-29
Who cares how they get there? The point is, they get there.
I always found this laughable:
UserA: Microsoft has sold XYZ licenses.
UserB: But..but there's no way to tell how many of those are end user sales
UserA: Uh, but go to every sales channel and look at every PC, it's preinstalled with Windows.
UserB: But..
UserA: Which means PC sales have a strong correlation with Windows sales, and PC sales are still relatively healthy.
Windows 8 will be installed on a majority of new PCs sold, and will command a monumental market share. More than iOS, more than Android, but somehow people will still find ways to contort the numbers and make it look like a failure.
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"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.The day has finally come: Google has started shipping Google Glass to the lucky few early adopters. Now that it's shipping, Google has also unveiled a lot more about the API and the specifications of the device itself. While the company had already given out substantial details at earlier occasions, there are still a few surprises here.
Member since:
2005-07-07
You don't really believe what Google is using as justification do you? You could make the case that WP8 doesn't have a sufficient userbase (although all signs indicate a large increase of 3-4 times), but Windows 8 sold a ton of licenses to date, with no signs of that decreasing.