Granted the whole world economy is worse off this year than last, but this still isn't good news for Microsoft.

PC sales are down 21% from this time last year with Windows 8's release now. If its from people wanting tablets now the news gets even worse as Windows 8 accounted for 1% of all tablet sales.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-windows-8-sales-data-is-in-and-its-horrible-news-for-microsoft-2012-11

Cause and effect, lovely, aren't they? Let's see if we can make other correlations.

2012 is the year Big Picture was released, PC sales drop by 21%
2012 is the year GOG.com started selling indies, PC sales drop by 21%
2012 was a year that Olympic Games were made, PC sales drop by 21%
2012 was the year Carmageddon was released on the iPad, PC sales drop by 21%

I can do this all day...

P.S. Where's the link for the NPD research in the linked article btw?

Edit: Found it, and I quote it

So you doubt there is a 21% drop?

I plan to wait for Win 9(Or whatever they call it) and get that....by then they'll hopefully realize how horribly they turned off a good portion of their (home)user base and take steps to rectify the situation.

No, but the linked article of Business Insider makes it seem like Windows 8 is the reason pc sales are down.
While Windows 8 may not have made PC sales recover, it didn't cause the lesser sales.

and Windows 8 with the 1% on tablet sales, because if that is true than Apple pretty much has a monopoly on the mobile market.

Read the article again. The 1% figure is for Windows 8 sales. 1% of the Win8 is for tablets, so with a number of 40 million licenses (quoted number, not sure how well it stands) that means 400 thousands Win8 tablets, since October 26.
Nowhere near an iPhone or an iPad release, but still decent number.

Android has a good chunk now - no individual device or device-maker comes close to Apple's iPad though - unlike the phone space with Samsung.

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Who knows? Maybe PC sales would've been even worse without Windows 8. :) Eh ... probably just hasn't saved the PC sales (yet ... or ever ... I don't own a crystal ball :P).

Obviously !

Regardless of what was/is the major driving force behind the decline in PC sales, it'd still be informative/interesting to know how many home users have bought a copy of Win8 so far vs. the amount who bought Win7 during the same time frame after it's release.

OF COURSE PC sales drop when Carmageddon was released. People realized they didn't need to buy a new PC to run the game. Unless their 386 can't handle Dosbox...

And same with indie titles- most I've played can be done on a non-gaming laptop. :)

... So win win for GOG- allowing gamers to play games without needing new PCs...

...though, I agree that there are so many factors and it can't be blamed soley on Windows 8.

No idea about home users, though this article (and quite a few others) mention Win8 selling 40 million licenses in one month, versus 60 million licenses in 2 months for Win7
On the other hand, Win8 did have a low price for quite a bit.

I think it has had some effect, but factors I'd place ahead of Windows 8.

Bad economy world wide. People are making their electronics last longer now.

Hardware speed stagnation. You only need so much speed to browse websites, talk on Skype, and do your taxes each year. Speeds for processors, especially at the high end, don't have the major jumps they used to, and prices tend to stay high and never drop much.

The rise in popularity of tablets and smart phones.

After those, I feel people going into a store and seeing that strange interface after being used to the old style from Windows 95 to today is making them go "uh, I think I'll pass."

People remember passing on Vista and got Windows 7 after wards. With that still fresh in people's minds, they are doing the same with 8 for whatever comes next.

I wonder if that's just home sales(for both figures...win7/win8) or includes business sales? And if OEM sales(buying a prebuilt-PC with Win8) are included or not?

Edit: Just found this on that article:

"Many of the sales are to PC manufacturers, who in turn sell a large number of machines to companies, very few of which are using Windows 8 yet.

Only around one per cent of the world's 1.5 billion or so personal computers, or around 15 million PCs, are running Windows 8."