Ballmer: 400 Million W8 Devices in a year!

This made me chuckle for the sole fact that:

That's certainly an ambitious number, but it's certainly doable, mostly because PC makers will start installing Windows 8 on new PCs on October 26th. Despite the slowing sales growth of new PCs, there will still be a lot of them that will have Windows 8 on their hard drive.

Microsoft is playing the "my numbers are bigger than yours" with Apple. How about judging W8's success based on:

1. Sales of W8 Modern apps.
2. Increase of touch based device usage.
3. Decline of desktop usage.
4. Higher scores on user satisfaction surveys than previous version of Windows and their competition.
5. Profit from W8 licensing.

W8 is the beginning of Windows Next and if the modern UI, touch, etc. are a flop then IMO simply using the number of licenses sold as the measure of success of W8 won't help drive Microsoft and Windows forward.

1. Sure, but the comparison isn't going to be easy. For instance, comparing year for year figures for WP7 vs. iPhone when each was released is about as fair as you can get, and yet that comparison is (somewhat rightly) always knocked down as comparing apples to oranges. IOW, both sides will spin these numbers and fanbois on both sides will claim victory while no one else will care.

2. Not sure why that matters, but sure. I expect the numbers to be staggering, and probably over inflated when you consider most laptops/ultrabooks are going to include touch interfaces from this point on.

3. Really can't agree here. The point of W8 is supposed to be "no compromise". You know, the "combination of a fridge and a toaster". Microsoft doesn't want a decline in desktop usage.

4. Oh, so customer satisfaction is more important than revenue? Funny... there's a whole industries (such as cell phone and cable service) where customer satisfaction is abysmal all the way around, and yet the businesses are highly successful. In any event, there are enough Microsoft haters around that it's unlikely any survey could accurately measure this, even if there were an increase.

5. Sure. That one's a given, as all PCs will include W8 going forward. Even Vista had great numbers here.

12 minutes ago, wkempf wrote

1. Sure, but the comparison isn't going to be easy. For instance, comparing year for year figures for WP7 vs. iPhone when each was released is about as fair as you can get, and yet that comparison is (somewhat rightly) always knocked down as comparing apples to oranges. IOW, both sides will spin these numbers and fanbois on both sides will claim victory while no one else will care.

When sales of your phones and market share growth are an order of magnitude less that your competitors that's a pretty good indicator that you're not doing too well. Lumping all W8 sales together obscures this point.

2. Not sure why that matters, but sure. I expect the numbers to be staggering, and probably over inflated when you consider most laptops/ultrabooks are going to include touch interfaces from this point on.

Not "touch included", "touch usage". Synofsky painted a picture that the world would convert to touch overnight and that people would be befuddled trying to use something that was not touch driven. If touch isn't used that really wasn't a success and Microsoft should consider investing in something else (i.e. when voice recognition on the desktop went no where despite their best efforts).

3. Really can't agree here. The point of W8 is supposed to be "no compromise". You know, the "combination of a fridge and a toaster". Microsoft doesn't want a decline in desktop usage.

It seems to me that the desktop was left in place in order to generate these big sales numbers and not piss of their corporate customers. IMO Microsoft wants people to progress towards the modern UI where modern interfaces such as touch are better supported.

4. Oh, so customer satisfaction is more important than revenue? Funny... there's a whole industries (such as cell phone and cable service) where customer satisfaction is abysmal all the way around, and yet the businesses are highly successful. In any event, there are enough Microsoft haters around that it's unlikely any survey could accurately measure this, even if there were an increase.

Seems to me that Apple's success is greatly due to user satisfaction. Customer's trust Apple's stuff to "just work". I'm sure Microsoft would love to have as many fanbois as Apple. How are you going to groom new ones if they are unsatisfied?

5. Sure. That one's a given, as all PCs will include W8 going forward. Even Vista had great numbers here.

No argument there except that it doesn't indicate that things like the adoption of WP or the modern UI was a success. In the long run that won't help Microsoft stay relevant.

Boy, did you miss the point. Trying to pick apart each thing I said totally ignores the point that none of the things you put on the list are any better indicators of success than Ballmer's "400 Million W8 Devices in a year." In this case, I'll go further: every thing you have on your list could have rosy numbers on some spec sheet somewhere, and YOU would still be you, and would troll these forums hating on Microsoft, talking about how badly they are doing.

You know, there's very little difference between fanbois and haters when it comes to blindly believing something.

4 minutes ago, wkempf wrote

You know, there's very little difference between fanbois and haters when it comes to blindly believing something.

I'd say that an important difference is that one is going to live a happy life full of joy and wonder, and the other is going to have pain, bitterness and ulcers.

1 hour ago, wkempf wrote

Boy, did you miss the point. 

Was that point 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5?

Ballmer's making some pretty ambitious projections there.

Windows 7 sold 240 million copies in its first year. Assuming Windows 8's UI design doesn't hurt adoption by the traditional desktop and laptop crowd, lets give that same number to W8.

If Windows Phone 8 holds to WP7's results for last quarter, they should expect over 20 million sold over the year.

That leaves almost 140 million new W8 buyers, presumably via new tablet/touch oriented hardware. That's over 1.6x the number of total iPads sold as of last March. Either that or WP sales have to rise dramatically to help close the gap.

4 hours ago, wkempf wrote

Boy, did you miss the point. Trying to pick apart each thing I said totally ignores the point that none of the things you put on the list are any better indicators of success than Ballmer's "400 Million W8 Devices in a year." In this case, I'll go further: every thing you have on your list could have rosy numbers on some spec sheet somewhere, and YOU would still be you, and would troll these forums hating on Microsoft, talking about how badly they are doing.

You know, there's very little difference between fanbois and haters when it comes to blindly believing something.

Sorry if I pissed you off by responding to your points. The fact is you missed my point. I wasn't hating on Microsoft. I'm concerned that Ballmer's overly nebulous meter for the "success" of W8 will ultimately lead to the irrelevancy of the Windows franchise. I don't want that.

Now carefully reach inside your pants and gently unbunch those undies. I'm sure that will make you feel a whole lot better.

3 hours ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

*snip*

I'm concerned that Ballmer's overly nebulous meter for the "success" of W8 will ultimately lead to the irrelevancy of the Windows franchise. I don't want that.

Huh? In what possible way can a marketing definition of "success" possibly make Windows irrelevant?

I'm pretty sure that, internally, there are a whole bunch of KPIs that strictly determine what will or won't constitute success not just for Windows as a whole, but for the various subsections of the ecosystem too. That's not the information you share with the world though, regardless of which way the outcome goes.

16 hours ago, AndyC wrote

*snip*

Huh? In what possible way can a marketing definition of "success" possibly make Windows irrelevant?

I'm pretty sure that, internally, there are a whole bunch of KPIs that strictly determine what will or won't constitute success not just for Windows as a whole, but for the various subsections of the ecosystem too. That's not the information you share with the world though, regardless of which way the outcome goes.

It can make Windows irrelevant if decisions (or the lack there of) are made off of that marketing definition. Too often, especially in large corporations, the dirty little details (KPIs) are often buried in order to save face (for the moment). It was pretty clear in the W8 blog that Sinofsky and crew were quite comfortable spinning and bending in order to justify what they wanted to do. If that trend continues we may be actually witnessing the downhill side of the Windows product lifespan (mind you a very long downhill side).

I frame this all in the same context of things like Ballmer discounting the iPhone originally. There's just no sense of urgency nor apparent desire to get things right. Sure you have to be confident in your public face but in private it should be a balls-to-the-wall effort to exceed what your competition has to offer and to get that effort out the door in a reasonable time frame. Microsoft has had flub after flub after flub in this regard and with W8 it doesn't look like that bothers them a whole lot.

I guess we'll just have to wait for the fat lady. If W8 turns out to be a dud too (especially in the devices category) maybe she'll be singing a tune for Ballmer's resignation soon.