Is Windows 8 selling slower than Vista?

Windows 8 has only just outsold Microsoft's worst performing operating system, Windows Vista, as it reaches its first year in the wild.

Both operating systems held around the same share of the global desktop market at the one year mark. 

Windows 8 was released for general availability on October 26, 2012, much to the consternation of some loyal Windows users confused and frustrated by an entirely new interface designed with mobile in mind.

One year on, Windows 8 holds around eight percent of the global desktop market, according to internet market share reporting company Net Applications.

Vista launched on November 2006 to business customers. Exactly one year after its launch, Vista held seven percent of the global desktop operating system market.

Comparatively, Windows 7 had almost 19 percent of the market one year on from its October 2009 launch.

As of this month, Windows 7 had the greatest market share of all desktop operating systems, at 46 percent. Windows XP came next with 31 percent, followed by Windows 8 with eight percent, Windows Vista with just under four percent, followed by various versions of Mac OS X and Linux.

How many customers?

According to figures released by analyst firm Gartner, Microsoft operating systems make up 94 percent, or 1.5 billion, of the 1.6 billion desktops and notebooks currently in operation.

Windows 8 and Windows 7 sold at similar volumes initially, both having recorded 100 million license sales within their first six months on the market, according to Microsoft.

Windows Vista took a twice as long (one year) to reach the 100 million threshold.

Microsoft declined to provide iTnews sales stats for Windows 8.

Further, the above figures don’t take into account how many users have taken advantage of the downgrade option available to Windows 8 customers, which allows them to install Windows 7 with a Windows 8 license. Microsoft also declined to provide figures on how many Windows 8 users have taken this path.

Net Applications - which like Gartner counted Microsoft OS software running on 1.5 billion PCs worldwide - reports Windows 8 currently accounts for eight percent of all global PCs in use, suggesting there are around 120 million people using Windows 8 across the globe.

Microsoft did reveal, at the Windows 8 six-month mark in May, that the OS had sold 100 million licenses - an average of about 16.5 million licenses per month.

Assuming a lower rate of average sales in the back half of the year, Microsoft would currently be sitting on between 170 and 190 million licenses sold.

The 60 million difference between the 120 million approximate users and the 180 million licenses estimated to have sold gives some insight into how many customers are likely to have bought the software but downgraded it to Windows 7.

A backlash?

Critics slammed Microsoft for, among others things, the radical change to a long-time and comfortable user interface, particularly the removal of the Start button and the introduction of the 'Metro' interface.

The introduction of a tile-based touch UI aimed to modernise Windows and bring the OS into Microsoft’s long-term vision for a cross-platform design.

Windows 8 essentially asked customers to use their PC as they would a mobile device - the results don't speak to this being a successful move.

Microsoft rectified some of these problems with its Windows 8.1 update, which re-introduced the Start button and added a range of more customisable options.

Analyst Gayla Sullivan told the Gartner Symposium this week that many organisations had decided to skip Windows 8 in favour of the next release.

"I don't think customers saw the features and benefits they had hoped for," Sullivan said. "I think it was very disappointing. When you move your operating system its a huge transition - if there is not enough benefit there, it's a hassle for the whole organisation." 

Find out which businesses are actually using it...

Who has upgraded?

Criticism of the new operating system hasn't deterred some of Australia’s largest organisations.

Bankwest was one of the first to jump on board. It recently started shifting its over 4000 staff off Windows XP and onto a standard operating environment based on Windows 8. 

Bankwest was attracted to faster boot-up times and lower licensing costs, IT staff told iTnews in August.

Advisory firm McGrathNicol rolled out Windows 8 as its new standard operating environmentfrom February this year and completed the deployment by May.

The company moved around 340 staff members from Windows 7 onto Windows 8 running on HP laptops. The business doesn’t use any desktops due to its highly mobile workforce, chief information officer Shiran Herath told iTnews. 

Herath offered staff a four minute educational video on how to use the new operating system before it was fully deployed, which he said went a long way to addressing any potential issues with the new interface.

Herath said there had been no undue complexity moving onto the new platform, nor had there been any negative feedback from users. 

“The general feedback has been that the system performance is very good,” he told iTnews. “With any operating system you’d expect some bad feedback, but the only questions we’ve had are around how to shut it down and sort through applications.”

Herath and his team offered a sweetener to staff for the Windows 8 rollout, upgrading from VPN connectivity to use of DirectAccess, which connects automatically rather than via the user having to manually initiate and terminate a connection. McGrathNicol staff had fallen in love with the feature, he said.

McGrathNicol did not offer users an option to downgrade to Windows 7.

Herath is looking to standardise on 'four pillars' - Microsoft for the majority of corporate applications, Cisco for networking, Telstra for comms and HP for hardware.

This extends into McGrathNicol’s mobile strategy - the company has around 140 Windows Phones issued to executives, compared to around 30 iPhones and iPads. 

In the works

Accounting software giant MYOB it also planning to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1 early next year. The company had planned to migrate in 2013 but delayed the rollout in favour of more pertinent programs.

MYOB CTO Simon Raik-Allen told iTnews the software company had first interacted with the new OS in pre-release. MYOB certified its products on the Windows 8 platform and in doing so got its internal systems prepared.

Raik-Allen said there was no rush to upgrade. The company was more focused on upgrading to discrete features such as SkyDrive and Office 365.

“It’s just a matter of finding the time,” he said. “We just have to package it up for the deployment environment - we already have the skills and the infrastructure - we just have to put it in the system and press the button.”

Raik-Allen also said he wanted to make sure MYOB’s 1200 staff were prepared for the change in user interface, but didn’t anticipate any issues.

“The difference with MYOB is we are 1200 computer geeks,” he said. “We love technology. There has been some mixed feedback but that doesn’t really bother us, we all know where the Windows button is and we know how to use it.”

MYOB uses Windows across all device forms in its organisation. Staff are issued with either a laptop or desktop based on preference, and around 200 smartphones are running Windows Phone. A smattering of MacBook Pros and iPhones rounds up the tally. 

Parramatta City Council is similarly moving from a Windows 7 desktop environment and Windows XP on its laptop fleet to an SOE based on Windows 8.1.

The new OS will go on 200 tablets and laptops first before the council’s 450 desktops. The council expects the entire process to take about two weeks.

The Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) is midway through designing the necessary backend and telecommunications infrastructure for its own move from Windows 7 to Windows 8, CIO Graham Gathercole told iTnews.

He expects to be able to rollout the new operating system to desktops and remote devices early next financial year. DAFF is already using Windows 8 Elitepad tablets.

The department will train and educate uses on the new interface in conjunction with Microsoft. Gathercole said he has not received any negative feedback yet.

Gathercole and the department liked the operating system’s Windows-to-go boot stick - which offers a corporate image installed on a bootable certified USB drive for use on any compatible computer - as well as DirectAccess. 

The Queensland Department of State Development, Infrastructure and Planning is in the planning stages of a Windows 8 migration, jumping from the soon-to-be-retired Windows XP, with deployment expected by the end of the first quarter 2014.

The department has been piloting Windows 8 tablets with executives to get them used to the new interface, and so far responses to the Windows 8 look and feel have been good, a department spokesperson said. 

The department will offer staff an ICT lab where workers can familiarise themselves with the new operating system. From there it will ascertain what, if any, extra training requirements are needed.

Additionally, Tourism Australian recently indicated it was studying a potential move, and ING Direct last year said at the commencement of its Windows 7 rollout that it would look at moving to Windows 8 when practicable.