Windows 8

The adoption rate of Windows 8 increased by more than 30% in January, according to the latest monthly numbers from analytics firm Net Applications. Microsoft’s (MSFT) latest operating system accounted for 2.26% of the market, compared to 1.72% in December and 1.09% in November. Despite the small increase, a majority of users continue to ignore Windows 8 and prefer older Windows versions.  The Windows 7 operating system is still found on nearly half, or 44.48%, of all computers, while the more than 10 year old Windows XP operating system has a market share of 39.5% and the widely panned Windows Vista continues to be used by 5.24% of users.

Despite the fact that most people haven’t upgraded to Windows 8, the promotional price for Microsoft’s (MSFT) latest operating system is coming to an end. The company has offered Windows 8 upgrades for as little as $39.99 for the past few months, but starting on February 1st that price will more than double to $119.99 and a comparable upgrade to Windows 8 Pro will jump to $199.99. Microsoft will also be offering its Media Center, which had previously been free to early adopters, for $9.99. Students and school faculty will be able to upgrade Windows 8 Pro for $70.

Microsoft (MSFT) has been running a special promotion to entice consumers to upgrade to Windows 8, where the company has offered the operating system for as low as $39.99 since it was released last year. However, that offer price is slated to end on January 31st and Microsoft on Friday announced pricing information for Windows 8 that will take effect on February 1st. The prices are as follows: the Windows 8 Pro Pack will be available for $99.99, the Windows 8 and Windows Pro upgrade editions will be sold for $119.99 and $199.99 respectively, and the Windows 8 Media Center Pack will be offered for $9.99. Despite selling more than 60 million licenses, analysts have said that Windows 8 adoption is off to a slow start and the company’s new pricing model is only expected to hamper it further.

Another week, another gloomy assessment of the PC market. Gartner on Monday released new research showing that “worldwide PC shipments totaled 90.3 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012, a 4.9 percent decline from the fourth quarter of 2011.” The reason that PC sales have fallen, says Gartner, is that consumers are using tablets as their primary content consumption devices and are only using PCs for productivity. In other words, consumers feel much less impetus to replace their PCs if they have tablets they can use for basic functions such as reading the news and watching videos. More →

The post-PC era is arriving faster than many of us had expected. New research from IDC shows that global PC sales in the fourth quarter of 2012 actually shrank by 6.4%, marking the first time in five years that holiday PC sales have slid. This comes despite the fact that Microsoft (MSFT) launched a $1.5 billion marketing blitz to promote the new Windows 8 operating system that launched this past fall, and IDC analyst Jay Chou says that all of those marketing dollars did very little to promote sales of Windows 8 machines. More →

Despite initial concerns that Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 8 operating system wasn’t living up to expectations, a company executive on Tuesday revealed that sales have been in line with the launch of Windows 7. Tammi Reller, chief financial and chief marketing officer of Windows, announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada that Microsoft has sold 60 million Windows 8 licensees to date. The figure includes sales to manufacturers for new PCs, as well as upgrades. The executive said that while “Windows 8 is a big, ambitious change,” sales are “roughly in line with where we would have been with Windows 7.” Microsoft previously revealed that it had sold 40 million licenses of Windows 8 by the end of November.