Consumer interest in Windows 8 tablets slumps
Too late to market?
Punters appear to be turning away from the Windows 8 tablets Microsoft hopes will get it back into the fondleslab game.
Back in January, Forrester Research, a market watcher, asked consumers which tablets they favoured. Some 46 per cent said they'd prefer a Windows device.
Asking the same question afresh later in the year, Forrester found that only 25 per cent of punters picked out Windows tablets in Q3.
Windows 8-based tablets aren't expected to become available to by until mid to late 2012. How far much further will interest in Windows tablets have fallen by then?
Yes, Nokia may be keen on Windows 8, and is developing a tablet based on the new Microsoft OS, but by the time it ships, Apple will have a third-generation iPad out - quite possibly with a 2048 x 1536 display and a quad-core processor - and updated Android tablets running Ice Cream Sandwich and definitely sporting five-core CPUs - Nvidia's Tegra 3, to be precise - will be out.
All that hardware tech will be available to makers of Windows 8 tabs, of course, but they'll be pitching against well-established tablet brands.
Forrester's figures get some corroboration from forecasts made by DisplaySearch in October. DisplaySearch reckons even by 2017, Windows 8 will account for just 8.8 per cent of the market - though that's still 25m units.
That sounds a lot, until you realise Apple is forecast to ship more than 187m iPads, and Android allies some 108m more. ®
COMMENTS
"Windows" + "Tablets" = bad combination of words psychologically
Windows is often what people are forced to use in their boring day-job. They seek something to use in their own time that is as far away from that as possible. Or so people tell me and I'm inclined to believe that.
If MS ever produce a tablet it will not succeed on just being good. It will need some other "gotta have" angle. I doubt they can pull this off.
Windows tablets
I must say, if I had been asked what OS I would like on a tablet, (in January), I would have said Windows. Not that I don't hate Windows, but because I would need: Word, Excell, PPT etc. I have subsequently had access to an iPad, (errindoors') and it's a joy to use. Simple, intuitive etc. I also use LibreOffice which is pretty darn good versus Office.
If asked again, I would put Windows in 3rd place, behind Aple and Android tablets.
Maybe we are seeing the beginning of the end of the Windows empire?
They could already be too late. Now that corporates have figured out how to lock down and, if necessary remote wipe, the tablets they are ordering them in large numbers. Sales reps need SAP/Salesforce/etc. not Office.
Paging Mark Twain
It's too soon to write-off Windows tablets and certainly too soon to predict the demise of either Windows or Microsoft - though people have been doing that for decades so why stop flogging a dead horse now?
Pricing, capabilities, advertising, hype and review ratings will dictate whether they succeed or fail, not any fanciful sticking of wet fingers in the air and trying to guess which way the wind will be blowing in a few months time.
Never forget that, setting aside brand loyalty, peer pressure and herd mentality, punters don't so much care what something is but whether that something does what they want in a way they like it being done. If Windows tablets 'tick the boxes' there's no reason it shouldn't succeed. The anti-M$ mob probably won't agree but Windows and Microsoft still have respect and brand loyalty.
the desktop is dead but MS d
oooh I don't know several hundred million corporate users may disagree.....
