Replies

I strongly disagree.....

People are buying Laptops, Tablets and Smart Phones these days. The Desktop has passed its peak. Besides Laptops, Tablets, Smart Phones affordability and port ability compared to a traditional desktop.... Apple, Google, Samsung have the online stores where people create millions of Apps, Music, Movies, TV show and books for their Laptops, Tablets and Smartphones. Microsoft reacted too slow to this. Yes they had an online store, but it was too restrictive, expensive and not user friendly. However, they have come a long way. Nevertheless, they are still behind the Apple, Google, Samsung and even new player... Amazon online stores.

Like you said Microsoft was late to the Smart phone market, and I believe they are falling behind fast. They may have a good product, but it maybe too late? Apple, Google and Samsung have saturated the market. So there customers are use to their operating system. Moreover, all of them are releasing new smart phones and Operating Systems ever year. Where is Microsoft? Finally, there is new player.... Amazon and their product is good and very affordable.

Wrong on every count ( or most counts?)

The desktop/laptop market is far from dead, and in fact, it's met with a recent uptick, to the point where the predictions are calling for way more than 300 million PCs to be sold in the next year.

Smartphones are meeting up with a wall, and it's called "saturation", in a market where the user has "matured" his/her needs, and found that, there really is no reason to keep purchasing a new smartphone every year or two. Tablets are in a funk, and they could go the way of the dinosaur in another couple of years, just like the netbook of the recent past.

With XP having lost support, there are expectations that a lot more PCs/desktops will be sold this year than in the recent past years. In fact, every time I go into a Best Buy or Tiger Direct, the traffic of purchasers is a lot bigger there for PCs than in the smartphones and tablets areas. The novelty for tablets may be meeting with an end, and that just means that, more people are opting for PCs. My son just purchased a Toshiba laptop with Win 8.1, and he never even considered a tablet or a Mac.

Windows machines sales may have slowed down in recent years,but again, that's attributable to people keeping their machines which are perfectly good for another few years,and could also be attributed to the slowdown in the economy.

Windows 8 has already sold close to 300 million licenses, which is not that drastically different from where Windows 7 was at the same period of time after it initial release.