Microsoft: Windows 8 is great, your argument is invalid - Computerworld (blog)

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) wants us to know that Windows 8 is a huge success, selling 40 million copies in its first month. That's probably faster than Windows 7! But hang on, just a week ago the sales situation looked dire. What could have changed in seven days?

In IT Blogwatch, bloggers scratch their heads (or get a bird to do it for them).

Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment.

 
Joab Jackson quotes Microsoft's Tami Reller:

"We believe Windows 8 is shaping up is as one of the company's most successful products," said [the CMO/CFO] for Windows. ... [She] pointed to a number of other statistics...addressing criticisms of its user interface. "When people experience Windows 8, they do find it is easy. ... We know from the data...that customers do indeed get the product."
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Microsoft has noted earlier in the month that Window 8's adoption has been faster than...Windows 7, though Reller cautioned against comparing the two. ... Reller recently took over part of the duties of Steven Sinofsky..."The team, holistically, is in great, great shape," she said.  MORE

 
Mary Jo Foley doesn't bury the lede:

Microsoft said it had sold 60 million Windows 7 licenses...in two months. So far, Microsoft has sold 40 million licenses of Windows 8 in one month.
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She said that over 90 percent...are using the Charms on Day one. (Charms...can be found by swiping in from the right.) ... And she played up Microsoft's data that found more than half of the users are using the Windows Store on their first day.  MORE

 
Ed Bott sometimes gets paid for writing this stuff:

That one month of sales is equal to more than half of the entire installed base of Macs. It is probably the [most] ever sold in a single month. And this...in a weak economy, with PC sales down year over year.  MORE

 
But Matt Rosoff has more questions than answers:

At the very least, that means that the PC market is not as dead as some detractors would like to believe. ... But this actually doesn't tell us much about how Windows 8 is doing or whether it's helping Microsoft compete in the tablet market.
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How many of those Windows 8 licenses were on new touchscreen devices? ... How many Windows RT licenses are included? ... How many of the licenses were retail upgrades? ... How many enterprises actually deployed the licenses they bought?  MORE

 
A week is a long time in the tech world, it seems. This was Preston Gralla on November 20:

Windows 8 sales have been sluggish and disappointing. ... Almost everywhere you turn, people are reporting slow Windows 8 sales.
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Topeka Capital Markets' ODM Barometer of Asian computer manufacturers...show quite sluggish sales..."The Windows 8 ramp is much lower than expected." ... Paul Thurrot...writes "Sales of Windows 8 PCs are well below Microsoft’s internal projections." ... Forrester Research found that the interest in Windows 8 from enterprises is only half that of Windows 7 during the same period. ... NewEgg also has seen slow sales of Windows 8 and Windows 8 hardware.
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So there's no doubt that Windows 8 sales so far have been sluggish. They may pick up next year.  MORE