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Windows 8 Market Share: Just 2.3 Percent By Barry Levine February 1, 2013 11:30AM     Since its release in late October, Windows 8 has not exactly been a stellar success, although the rate of increase for Windows 8 adoption appears to be steady, rising about 0.6 percent each month. In comparison, three months after its release, Windows 7 had reached a 7.7 percent market share. Is negative user feedback to blame for Win 8's slower adoption?   Related Topics Windows 8 Windows 7 Vista OS X Surface Pro Latest News Oculus VR Gets Huge Funding Boost Huawei Phone Is a Quarter-Inch Thin Yahoo, Apple Disclose Data Requests Free Video Messaging Comes to Skype Prism's Secret: Bigger Data Seizure The bad news for Windows 8: its market share of the desktop operating system market is only 2.3 percent. The good news: That's still about 60 million licenses. The market share is reported in new figures by industry research firm Net Applications, which finds Windows 7 with 44.5 percent, Windows Vista at 5.2 percent, and even the venerable XP still at 39.5 percent. Mac OS X is about 6.4 percent. Microsoft has not issued a breakdown of the 60 million licenses, such as how many are to distribution channels and how many to consumers or businesses. Of course, Windows 7 has been out for about four years. By comparison, three months after its release, Win 7 had reached a 7.7 percent market share. Windows 8 was released for general availability in late October. Chromebooks Rising? The rate of increase for Windows 8 adoption appears to be steady, rising about 0.6 percent each month since October. But the promotional period is now over for users who had purchased Windows 7 after June 2012 to buy Windows 8 for $14.99. Upgrading to the standard Windows 8 is now $120, and $200 for Windows Pro. PC sales have been down, in part due to the rise in tablets. There have also been public grumblings that raise questions about Win 8's overall success. Acer President Jim Wong, for instance, has told news media that Win 8 "is still not successful," and added that "a simple way to judge if it is successful or not" is to look at whether the whole PC market came back after the Windows 8 launch. It has not. One of the most interesting developments in the PC market is the apparent rise of Chromebooks, those cloud -based laptops using Google's Chrome operating system. When first released, many observers predicted they might have some limited uses, such as real estate agents picking up any Chromebook to view and manage that day's listings. As prices on tablets and more full-featured laptops come down, the thinking was that Chromebooks were not necessarily a bargain. But Chromebooks' ease of management is proving to be a big selling point. Last weekend, for example, Acer's Wong told news media that Chromebooks have accounted for 5 to 10 percent of his company's shipments in the U.S. since those models' release in November. (continued...) 1  |  2  |  Next Page >   Tell Us What You Think Comment: Name: ileana: Posted: 2013-02-06 @ 1:51am PT I HATE windows 8!! I am only commenting in hopes that some Microsoft employee might see 1 more disgruntled consumer. I do not need/want the touch stuff. It is not intuitive or user friendly in any way. Even the people who are supposed to be the tech support don't know what to do. You can't run chrome or firefox without it crashing. And that's just a few of the bad things. Yuck! Chester Tan: Posted: 2013-02-03 @ 5:30pm PT I must be one of the few who enjoyed using Windows 8, which I shared in my blog article. http://musicphotolife.blogspot.sg/2013/01/enjoying-windows-8.html The only major complaint from consumer is the missing Start Menu, but it's just a matter of spending $4.99 on a third party app to bring it back. Therein lies the beauty of Windows: loads of apps to personalise the OS. Dennis Latimer: Posted: 2013-02-02 @ 1:00am PT Microsoft could have been clever with this and released 2 versions of windows 8, one for PC (desktop) and 1 for "touch". Everyone happy. MS placed in the markest correctly. Instead they released something that causes confusion to most people I know with it. MS could actually be helping its competitors. Before I get the usual comments, I have windows XP, 7 and 8 at home In addition I have Ubuntu Mac and Mageia on machines at home, as well as an android tablet. Of all these, the one that I find most aggravating is 8. It is not intuitive, takes time to learn and in the end, I stay away from the modern UI for most of the time. For friends, I have had to install classic shell for them to be happy. I am hoping that MS will release an update to give people what they want: a simple on/off selection for touch/desktop. Also Visit: iPad Info Center Billions of Bytes Mobile Device Now Apple Info Center TopTechWire.com Brocade delivers a comprehensive cloud-optimized networking portfolio of products and open-architecture solutions to simplify and accelerate the deployment of cloud computing and provide maximum deployment flexibility with plug-in scalability. Click here to learn more.  Mobile Tech 1.   Why Google's Project Loon is Smart 2.   Authorities Want Phone 'Kill Switch' 3.   Small Business Gets Mobile Ad Boost 4.   Apple Bides Time, But Markets Moving 5.   MS Office 365 for iPhone Hits Market

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Enterprise Hardware Spotlight

Samsung Offers Tiny, Superfast PCIe SSDs for Ultrabooks Solid-state drives are continuing their march forward. On Monday, Samsung Electronics announced it has started to mass produce the first PCI-Express 3.0 SSDs for the new wave of Ultrabooks.   Amazon.com Joins 3D Printer Craze, Enabling Wide Availability Commercially available 3D printers have recently moved from being expensive hobbyist devices to being pricey but accessible consumer and manufacturing machines. And now, Amazon.com will sell 3D printers & supplies online.   New Facebook Data Center Uses All Home-Grown Servers Facebook has opened its new data center in Lulea, Sweden. The data center is a first in two ways: the first in Europe and the first to be equipped with all Facebook-designed, Open Compute servers.

Mobile Enterprise Spotlight

Why Google's Project Loon is Smart Business Google is once again proving that it's much more than a search engine or even a mobile-device company, with Project Loon. The initiative aims to bring "balloon-powered Internet" to isolated areas of the world.   Authorities Want Smartphone 'Kill Switch' To Fight Thefts Law enforcement authorities are calling on the smartphone industry to adopt "kill switch" technologies that would deter theft by squeezing the market for selling stolen devices, which would be worthless if "bricked."   Small Business Gets Boost from Mobile Marketing Aside from the requisite e-commerce tricks, small businesses are turning their attention to the mobile arena to engage social media-savvy customers, as mobile marketing tools offer more channels.

Enterprise Technology Spotlight

New Facebook Data Center Uses All Home-Grown Servers Facebook has opened its new data center in Lulea, Sweden. The data center is a first in two ways: the first in Europe and the first to be equipped with all Facebook-designed, Open Compute servers.   Cisco Telecom Router Ready for Internet Traffic Flood The Carrier Routing System-X unveiled by Cisco for the telecommunications industry is a 400 Gbps per slot system that can be expanded to nearly 1 petabit per second, enough to deal with the coming flood in demand.   HP's IT in a Box Targets SMBs by Using Google Apps Hewlett-Packard is partnering with Google on HP SMB IT in a Box, which it bills as a "one-stop shop" solution for small and medium business customers. The move is likely to ruffle Microsoft's feathers.

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