newspeak

Windows 8 market share stalls, XP at record low • The Register.

Basic message is that Win 8.x has failed in the marketplace and people are turning from XP to Win 7. Why? I suggest it reflects the lack of any compelling reason to buy a Windows 8.x box—absent, that is, compulsion from education or work. For a consumer wanting a computer to use Facebook or other social media or to watch or read works online? OS X or the cheapest and most familiar form of Windows. And increasingly: tablets.

It gets worse for MSFT. Apple’s strategic entry into corporations via iPads modulo IBM but also, and much more importantly, via the sheer popularity and liquid integration into established environments ruptures MSFT’s storied claim of the corporation commons as its own.

I don’t expect to see MSFT collapse into itself any time soon. It’s not a credit agency surfing on consumer credibility. And it’s not like Sun or any of the other premillennial stars of the tech world; indeed, the sheer size, the very momentum of the company makes any comparison difficult. It may also prove the case that Azure lifts the rest of the company into the relevancy it’s losing on the desktop. But if I want interesting controversy, excitement, and genius, I don’t look to MSFT but elsewhere, and I think I’m not alone in this dis-regard.