Microsoft Overestimates the Touch Market with Windows 8
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2411445,00.asp
On October 26, Microsoft released Windows 8, the successor to the well-received Windows 7 which was released three years ago. Windows 8 is a radical departure from the previous Windows OS’s, removing the Start Menu from the Desktop and introducing a second entirely new interface (formerly known as the Metro interface) that is highly touch-driven. Instead of the usual desktop windows, this interface is made up of a grid-like lattice of Live Tiles: little “mini-apps” which provide users with a stream of data, and when clicked, expand to the full-screen version of the app. Traditional Desktop applications are represented as static tiles in the Metro interface, which open in the Desktop environment when clicked.
Everything in the Metro interface is optimized for touch-screens. For example, to close a full-screen Metro app, users drag it down from the top of the screen and “swipe” it to the bottom. Swiping across from the right side of the screen brings up the Charms bar, which provides services like searching and sharing from within an app. The Metro interface works beautifully well for touch-enabled devices (e.g. Tablet PC’s or touch-screen laptops) but has gotten severe criticism for its poor usability on a traditional machine. Many of the touch gestures are difficult to perform on a mouse, and it is often even more difficult to access the associated features using the keyboard. The OS has also received criticism for its dual interfaces and the confusion that results from doing some things in the traditional Desktop environment and others in the new Metro interface.
With the release of Windows 8, Microsoft is moving in a new direction, choosing to place more focus on tablets and other touch-driven devices. The new OS was designed primarily with these touch devices in mind, and its support for traditional desktop machines was secondary. It is understandable that Microsoft chose to do this, but it was the wrong decision on their part. Over the past few years, we have seen an explosion in the popularity of smart phones and tablets, and they seem to be still increasing in market share compared to traditional PCs. But these technologies are still new, and have not had time to settle into an equilibrium yet. Microsoft, looking at the trends in rapid adoption of smart phones and tablets, thinks that these trends will continue and the traditional desktop PC will be overtaken by the new technology. In other words, they think tablet use will spread through the entire network of computer users. However, this is not the case.
There are certain groups of people within the global computer-user network who have not yet adopted touch-enabled devices, and do not intend to do so, because they simply are not as optimized for performing the tasks that they need to do. For example, computer programmers, graphic designers, and others need the flexibility of the desktop environment, rather than the immediacy of the tablet environment, to do their work. Tablets and smartphones can be thought of as goods with positive network effects. Especially with the prominence of social media, and the ease of which these devices integrate with social media, they are more attractive the more people use them. For example, if two friends both use smartphones, they can easily send images, links, etc. to each other by using their phones’ sharing feature.
However, the programmers, designers, and other “power-users” who do not intend to make the switch form many dense clusters in the network. Everyone in their field uses desktops, and desktops are actually the superior technology in their case, so they have no incentive to switch to touch-enabled devices. Therefore, tablets and smart-phones will not spread through the entire network and overtake traditional computers as Microsoft thought. Rather, they will reach an equilibrium where x fraction of technology users use tablets primarily and 1-x fraction use desktops primarily. Microsoft Windows was the operating system of choice for many of the 1-x fraction that do not intend to use touch devices. However, by putting traditional computers on the “back burner” with Windows 8, Microsoft may very well be alienating a large portion of its most loyal consumer base.
—Drew92