Windows 8 No Better Than Vista, Says Samsung Exec
First it was Asus and Acer, then Fujitsu. Now Samsung has added its voice to the growing chorus of PC manufacturers whinging away about sluggish demand for machines running Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating system.
Asked for his take on recent reports that the PC market will continue to contract through 2013, Jun Dong-soo — president of Samsung’s memory chip division — said he doesn’t expect the PC industry to rebound anytime soon. And if and when it does, that rebound won’t be driven by Windows 8.
“The global PC industry is steadily shrinking despite the launch of Windows 8,” Jun said. “I think the Windows 8 system is no better than the previous Windows Vista platform.”
No better than Vista? Too cruel, too cruel.
And Jun was just getting started. That Vista quip was part of a one-two sucker punch that ended with a slag of another one of Microsoft’s big new efforts.
“[Microsoft’s] rollout of its Windows Surface tablet is seeing lackluster demand,” he said. “Meanwhile, previous vigorous pitches by Intel and MS for thinner ultra-books simply failed and I believe that’s mostly because of the less-competitive Windows platform.”
A brutal commentary on Windows 8, which has so far utterly failed to catalyze PC sales. That said, as I’ve noted here before, Microsoft isn’t the only responsible party here. PC makers clearly blew it as well by failing to release hardware that capitalized on Windows 8’s strengths.