Tab for Xmas, Mr Consumer? Yes please. And Mr Busin... NOPE The slab revolution in UK consumer land continued over Chrimbo but many biz customers are still struggling to justify wider deployments and most of those that did steered well clear of Windows 8. Disties shipped a total of 1.5 million tabs in Q4, a hike of 53.1 per cent on a year ago. Some 16.4 per cent of these went via biz …
"This equates to a little over 4,900 Windows 8 tabs being sold via distribution."
Actually...I wonder if that number is all that bad. Before you all explode, hear me out: Windows 8.1 didn't land until August 27, 2013. Most corporates wouldn't dream of touching a Windows OS until it had hit service pack 1. So it isn't unreasonable to assume that the majority of those units were snapped up not to fit a given "now" need, but instead were bought for "proof of concept" work eyeing future deployments.
How many businesses are there in the UK that really, honestly, need tablets for their work and aren't already deeply embedded into the Apple ecosystem? I'd guess that 4,900 tablets probably represents around a thousand companies at least putting in the effort to seriously consider Windows as a tablet platform for their needs in 2014.
Maybe those aren't stellar numbers...but corporate compatible Windows 8 (i.e. service pack 1) has only been out for about 4 months, compared to a Apple ecosystem that's 3.5 years old. It's the next 8 months that will tell the tale. If we start to see big corporate wins in the UK in the first half of 2014 we'll know that some of these were POCs that proved out.
If not, I'm thinking we can safely assume that Apple won this battle and Microsoft haven't a snowball's chance in a neutron star of clawing their way back.
Just think how many people bought the new iPad during the week of its release.
Those numbers really puts the MS numbers to shame.
Yet, you go into the main UK retail chain for computer kit and all you see is windows 8 devices. mosyl cheapo laptops and there, MS falls down again. their tablet devices that were any use (that rules out the -RT line) were simply far too expensive.
MS failed because they (IMHO) tried to present a seamless brand over all the platforms. Unless the tablets with intel chips were cheaper than the laptops then I reall think the writing was on the wall.
Apple differentiates between IOS and OSX so there is a gap in the user perception of the different platforms that Apple offer. Big difference and a huge difference is shipments.
That leaves the question, where next for MS?
What can they do to ship more kit against the Apple/Android behmoths?
not an easy question to answer and one that must be on the top of the list for their new CEO.
Dropping Metro/Modern from laptops/PC would be a simple step to differentiate the platforms. It may not be enough in the long term. Popcorn anyone?
I may be wrong, but when the Gadget Show tries out 3 hand held gaming computers and 2 of them are using Android, with none using iOS or Microsoft then IMO the writing is on the wall. It's always the young who set growth patterns and the next generation doesn't look like Microsoft. Yesterday I was in Staples and amongst the office machinery they were selling a 7 inch tab for £59. This is an impulse buy point, I'll watch with interest.
My company bought over one hundred iPad 2s a couple of years ago based purely on a scheme dreamt up by the head of sales for all his field staff to lug one around. Just before Christmas they were donated to a charity that provides IT for schools in the developing world.
Whilst they looked rather lovely and weighed less than the laptops before, none of the sales team could use them with customers ageing IT (projectors etc), Excel etc was borked on Apple's slabs and the geolocation software that was indented to keep tabs on the staff showed them travelling from China to Colchester in the space of an afternoon.
We're currently trialling Windows 8 tabs and hybrids against Linux based laptops with far more success. One wonders whether a thorough evaluation of the ipads that the London plod are buying were properly field tested also, or whether the Met chiefs have been watching too much CSI again.
Sounds like your employers are deploying common sense THIS time around:
1) Identifying purpose for said device and intended use case
2) Trialling said theory to see if it works in practice (clearly missed before)
3) Roll out if successful with trial issues resolved
...is more successful every time.
Bonus points for not just throwing things away but finding an appropriate onward journey for what is blatantly perfectly serviceable kit.
Mines the one with the Surface 2 Pro in the (large) pocket. Touch or not, having a keyboard makes all the difference (as does having the Operating System I happen to prefer, have every application for and so on). Equally the ability to run multiple apps in real multi-tasking. Not on an iPad.
Not one of the any of the ones which are our primary ones anyhow that's for sure. Oh forgot, they decided to give the majority of UK stock to DSG didn't they and now they are wondering why no one else could sell them. Strange that!
As for discussions with our businesses customers about what kit they need it's simple. Tablets (no matter Windows, iOS or Android) are a complete and utter waste of time to someone spending all day banging in accounts into Sage or using Word all day. These clients only buy machines now when they die, or they expand staff levels (still not very common at the moment) which is why nothing much desktop/laptop wise is selling. These customers have a 8+ year old C2D desktop which is good enough, fast enough, and ideal for someone to spend all day using for general office tasks. They simply don't need new hardware and that is the battle we have to overcome. Currently the only tablets selling to the majority of businesses are for the marketing and sales droids so they can dangle something fancy in front of the customer to try to impress them, or management who want something as they've heard they need one to look fancy while sitting in the airport.
As mentioned in the article. Yes Barclays bought a shedload of iPads. And they are going to be used by whom? Yep, sales droids selling stuff pottering around in front of customers. Are they going to sitting there typing letters on them all day? The RSI lot will have a field day :P
The majority of businesses are still a sit down in an office environment doing lots of mundane grunt work. Tablets, touch screens, gestures and all that are utterly useless. A good sized monitor and a full size keyboard and mouse are the perfect tool in this environment. The snag is that nothing is needing the power of a modern system in this environment. Why does the secretarial pool, or accounts need a bunch of i7's? Simply they don't, thus they aren't selling. As soon as the manufacturers stop listening to ANALysts and actually listen to the customers the better and quiet possibly they could get some sales going to them.
The majority of businesses are still a sit down in an office environment doing lots of mundane grunt work.
Yes, this is what happens now. In the near future (before 2020) big business will destroy at least 40% of these jobs with restructuring and automation. The outlook for these workers in SMBs is, perhaps, even worse. The little pool of admin/clerical & financial support workers seem to be going even more quickly as these business owner/directors restructure to use smartphones, "Cloud Services" (I hate that term), and the nice lady "who does" (1 or 2 days a week part-time).
A supporting anecdote: My financial advisor has just come back from the USA, where he met two different individuals who both run "personal" financial advice and superannuation businesses; one of them had 300+ Client's and was dealing with them all himself with a single PA. The other had 1000+ clients that were serviced by himself, another advisor and two part time admin people, this business owner was looking to cut down his costs...
"This equates to a little over 4,900 Windows 8 tabs being sold via distribution"
I call **** - we're a tiny company, we've sold them to customers, I've bought one personally and they're appearing in various coffee shops (slowly, but surely) - and I hardly live in a major city.
I don't doubt that the ipad sales are significantly high and by an order of magnitude (given they're being used for just about anything in the most ridiculous scenarios to "justify" purchase - often when they're probably the least practical option for a task), but I also don't think the sales are *that* low.
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