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Comment by nivla | Hacker News Reader

> How many people really want a Windows machine at this point? With Valve's aggressive move into taking PC games off of Windows altogether, I really don't know what market segment is left loyal to the platform.

Given that Windows still holds > 91% of the OS market share [1], I don't think it is going to fade away anytime soon.

> I'd put money on Windows 9 going Metro only

That is never going to happen, given how much influence Microsoft has on the corporate world, it would be equivalent killing their golden goose.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows#Usage_share

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Regarding sales as opposed to usage:

Windows once held an overwhelming lead in 2008 with about 70 percent of the OS market, Forrester found in estimating overall personal computing device sales by OS. By 2012, that market share had shrunk to about 30 percent.

-- http://rcpmag.com/articles/2012/10/22/microsoft-os-market-sl...

According to a Goldman Sachs report acquired by The Seattle Times, Windows lost massive share in the global compute market-- from being the OS of choice in 97% of all computing devices in 2000 to just 20% in 2012.

-- http://www.consumerit.eu/index.php?option=com_content&vi...

That's hilarious - "all computing devices" includes tablets, and even some smartphones. No wonder desktop Windows is "declining" in popularity against that whole market.

It's not desktop Windows. It's Windows.

See my posts re declining PC sales for why this would matter (hint: people are getting work done on devices).

Then we can fall back to the argument that consumer PCs aren't really important anyway.

People are using tablets for what they used to use PC's for in the past. My mom can do everything on her iPad: e-mail, surf the net, take and look at baby photos of my daughter. In 2000 she had a Windows PC, but she's unlikely to ever buy one again. To the extent that it's not Windows running on those tablets, that represents a real loss in market share for Windows.

> That is never going to happen, given how much influence Microsoft has on the corporate world, it would be equivalent killing their golden goose.

You stopped reading when you read the sentence you wanted to read. I wrote:

Windows 8 is Microsoft's parting gift to the desktop. I'd put money on Windows 9 going Metro only, and perhaps a revival of the NT brand for enterprise buyers to keep the desktop around.

Enterprise will be given something, but I don't think it will be Windows 9. It'll be something else, maybe a new fork from Windows 7.

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