I've just recently read an analysis about Win7's market share after one week since it going public. Anyway, the number was something around 2% and the article author was flaming MS for performing miserably with it's newest OS. He even took it so far as to say that XP and Vista users are migrating to Apple's products instead of Windows 7.
I don't see 2% as a failure, even if there was quite a substantial pre-order campaign. Judging from pre-order pricing of the product which changed quite a few times between august and release date, the campaign was a huge success. 2% still means millions of copies in this market.
What I do see a problem with is pricing of the product now that it is released:
105€ for Home premium (with a new computer)
200€ for Ultimate (also with a new computer)
These are prices for Slovenia (amazon.de is a bit cheaper), but I also got full prices from amazon.de which are 120€ for home premium and 300€ for Ultimate.
Now, I'm sorry, MS, but this is way too excessive. 300€ for an OS?!?!? Operating system! I mean, it's not like I can do much productivity on the OS alone, can I? Sure, the calculator is great, finally improved after what, 29 years of existence? OK, so the scientific mode was added with Win 3.0 "only" 19 years ago. Wordpad is also super cool, if I may be a bit sarcastic (I own Office 2007 BTW).
Not much else productivity-like in there, is there? It's funny, but those games seem to be the most value-add in the OS and even for them there are many freeware alternatives.
In the end we're still talking only about an OS.
Now, I ordered 2 copies of home premium for my home needs. Fortunately for me, MS decided to offer a pre-order promotion of about 50€ per home premium.
I will state this for the record: 50€ is an acceptable price for an OS, 300€ is not! I might pay 80€ for premium versions, but I definitely discarded that because premiums were 110€ in pre-order. So in my view MS just lost 30€ per copy just because they priced ultimate too high.
Need I say more?
