We CAN'T GET ENOUGH Windows 8 tablets, moan distributors Windows 8 tablets are trickling into the UK channel but demand is still barely outstripping supply, distributors have reported. OEMs have taken a conservative attitude to their inventory position this Christmas, ignoring bullish calls from retailers and web shops for more kit - it seems the experiences of 2011's stock mountain …
It's hard to know whether it's aversion or apathy... the UI is ugly, crap and uninviting, the price of the devices are poor compared to other "similar" (in the eyes of consumers) devices and to top it off, they have a nasty habit of looking like just a line of new laptop-sort-of-tablet things on a shelf.
Consumers browsing in a store like that tend to want to look at what they perceive to be consumer items, not laptop-sort-of-tablet things with ugly interfaces. In other words, the target marketing direction is all over the place. Again. Consumers don't generally get excited by just another fecking Operating System... they'll tend to get much more excited by real tangible devices that just happen to run that Operating System. Does the Apple marketing fluff go on about the latest version of iOS or does it ignore that and sell the gadget? (That might happen to have new features as a result of the latest iOS, but that's not the core of the marketing message)
Similar story here. I was in John Lewis' electrical dept, which is always jam-packed, and I looked at the Windows 8 laptops, as I hadn't yet played with one. It flummoxed me and after about 5 mins of trying to work out what the hell I had to do to get to stuff I recognised, I gave up. Yes, that irrelevant, and I'm sure with time I'd have mastered it, but what WAS interesting, was how many people tried to use one too and gave up. One couple were in there to buy a laptop, and after the salesman introduced them to Win 8 and showed them around (I was watching for tips!), the chap asked why he had to keep doing things in an awkward way and how could he just 'get on the desktop to do some work'. The salesman tried to explain how he had the 'choice' between two environments, but the guy wasn't impressed and walked off saying to his wife he'd try and get a 'proper Windows laptop' elsewhere.
Most of the people who tried to use one to see how it worked, gave up too.
Yes, vote me down if you must as "any idiot could learn Win 8 in no time", but Jo Public were NOT impressed at the shop I was in (and I was in there a long while as the missus was looking at shoes, handbags and christmas decorations....)
Or at least the geek in me wants it, being addicted to gadgets and all. Stopped because of the difference between Windows RT and Windows 8; the later tablet isn't available yet.
Maybe everyone else is scared, or it hasn't really crossed their minds? It doesn't seem that long ago when Windows 7 was the latest and greatest. And anything else was an iPad. Maybe in a year's time, it'll get picked up, kind of like the Nexus and Samsung tablets now (anecdotal)? Could it be the software and games?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
