There are a couple of big risks with Windows 8, I think.
On the one hand, they could easily alienate power users, who are not just important for their business but also for their influence. When the CTO of a big, tech savvy company decides he doesn't want Windows 8 on his or her own desktop, how will that influence their decisions with regards to the whole company? For myself, if Metro were out of the equation Windows 8 would be a sure purchase. There are lots of awesome features in there, like Hyper-V in the workstation OS (something they should have enabled in Win7) and lots of other cool stuff. But with Metro being shoved down my throat I might just wait and see.
Another big problem is that they are rebranding instead of creating a new brand. They are trying to drag the Windows architecture and brand onto the tablet platform. I think there's a very real risk that this will tarnish that attempt. One of the big reasons people have gravitated towards tablets is because they are so fundamentally different and lack all the traditional hassles of old style operating systems. I think there's a very real risk that the public perception of Windows 8 based tablets is that it's just new skin on old bones. That risk is heightened by the fact that such an assessment is substantially correct.
And by putting all of their eggs in one unified Metro basket (a classic "strategy tax" mistake) they risk failure on one leg dooming the other. If, hypothetically, Windows 8 tablet sales were very weak that could color people's impressions of the quality of Windows 8 as a desktop OS.
On the one hand, they could easily alienate power users, who are not just important for their business but also for their influence. When the CTO of a big, tech savvy company decides he doesn't want Windows 8 on his or her own desktop, how will that influence their decisions with regards to the whole company? For myself, if Metro were out of the equation Windows 8 would be a sure purchase. There are lots of awesome features in there, like Hyper-V in the workstation OS (something they should have enabled in Win7) and lots of other cool stuff. But with Metro being shoved down my throat I might just wait and see.
Another big problem is that they are rebranding instead of creating a new brand. They are trying to drag the Windows architecture and brand onto the tablet platform. I think there's a very real risk that this will tarnish that attempt. One of the big reasons people have gravitated towards tablets is because they are so fundamentally different and lack all the traditional hassles of old style operating systems. I think there's a very real risk that the public perception of Windows 8 based tablets is that it's just new skin on old bones. That risk is heightened by the fact that such an assessment is substantially correct.
And by putting all of their eggs in one unified Metro basket (a classic "strategy tax" mistake) they risk failure on one leg dooming the other. If, hypothetically, Windows 8 tablet sales were very weak that could color people's impressions of the quality of Windows 8 as a desktop OS.