Despite a number of industry figures and PC manufacturers expressing their doubts regarding the operating system's ability to succeed, Microsoft has seen strong demand for Windows 8 touch systems.
"Touch machines are actually selling above expectations," said Bob O'Donnell, a program vice president at IDC. "Some vendors are actually facing shortages because touch panels are in limited supply. Vendors are saying they can't get as many touch-based machines as they would like to meet the demand that they're seeing."
Rhoda Alexander, an analyst at IHS iSuppli, agreed with O'Donnell's comments. "We've talked to a number of PC makers that are having trouble obtaining touch panels and some of the vendors I've talked to said they can't keep them on the shelf," she said.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has echoed the two statements from the aforementioned analysts. Tami Reller, chief marketing and financial officer for Windows, said last week that there are "not enough" touch devices available for consumers.
However, IDC's O'Donnell added that non-touch Windows 8 PCs aren't faring as well, as mirrored by NPD sales figures. "The non-touch machines are selling below expectations. If high-end machines are selling better than expected. Great. But that doesn't make up for low-end volume machines."
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Zak Islam is a freelance writer focusing on security, networking, and general computing. His work also appears at Digital Trends and Tom's Guide.
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vmem Duh? They made it so damn touch friendly. I recently upgraded, and one of the first things my friend did while checking out the OS was reach out with his hand and smear his finger-prints on my monitor (not, I do not have a touch-screen and he knows this).Reply
I believe Surface pro, and surface pro-Like x86 capable tablets will have a huge demand if priced and marketed appropriately. meanwhile, I think the desktop may just turn into a high-end workstation, or gaming console, or NAS, essentially serving niche needs -
dimar How about a touch screen that will shock users that have dirty fingers? Maybe it will get people to wash their hands more often, and as a side effect the screens will be dirt free :-)Reply
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stickmansam Hopefully the OEM's will make a cheap x86 Win8 table then maybe I will think of buying windows 8 (Pro is priced out of my budget)Reply -
bystander While I may not want a touch screen PC, I definitely am interested in touch for a laptop or tablet. I have always been unsatisfied with the touchpad on laptops. Touch screens would be a welcome improvement and of course tablets would be touch.Reply -
Hay ZaK, IDC = Spindoctors, IHS iSuppli are the ones that predicted windows phone os would overtake iOS in 2009!Reply
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A lot of people seems to think of $1100 is the standard price for Windows 8 tablets because Surface Pro has been announced at this price. Actually the Windows 8 tablets using Core i5 models ranges from $800 to $1300, depending on the vendor, with Acer Iconia W700 currently being the cheapest (but with 64Gb SSD and i3, +$100 for 128Gb SSD). The prices are more expensive because Intel Core CPU are a lot more expensive than ARM CPU.Reply
Also, if you do not need the performance of Core i3/i5 tablets, there are several Atom based tablets which is a lot cheaper, some are even in the range of Surface RT. The battery life is much longer than Core i3/i5 models as well, at the cost of the CPU performance.
Next year the battery life may improves further and the prices are likely to drop when Intel releases new CPU, and vendors start to adopt AMD APU into the mix. -
tech_twist the downside is if they'll make touch screen it'll be more expensive. And what about the gamers perspective? do we benefit in touch screens when playin? dont think so.Reply -
ohim Even though i don`t see myself editing my work in premiere with anything else than mouse and keyboard i see a lot of people actually being afraid of trying newer input devices that ar based around touch and gestures, guess if apple came with something similar for Mac OS it would have been called revolutionary... or maybe we should just wait few years just like the table ,remember MS came with a tablet in 2001 everyone went "meh" 6 years latter at Apple ... "revolutionary" ... just give it a try before bashiung itReply