Hey Chris, I had a thread a week ago in which I praised the surface, and even have a Lumia phone. MSFt makes some great products, mate

Hmm...interesting.

How could anyone be a google super-fan? Lol

yeah ok i missed that then sry.  (not that i even know if it is good or not)

And a Goldman Sachs/ITC study published just a few days ago claims that Microsoft's market share is already as low as 20%, Apple taking the second place with 24%, and Google operating systems clearly leading with 42%.

http://seattletimes.com/html/microsoftpri0/2019853243_goldman_sachs_microsoft_os_has_gone_from_more_than.html

That should clearly show that plain numbers say very little until one clearly knows what exactly they represent and how to interpret them.

Like when Microsoft announced that they had sold 40 million Windows 8 licenses in the first month, even more than Windows 7 copies in the same period. That sounds like Windows 8 is popular and successful - but the picture looks quite different when one knows that...

1) these numbers were greatly helped by an insane 1.5 billion marketing campaign

2) of these 40 million licenses sold, only 15 million had actually been activated - so by the time, just about 1/3 of the people who bought Windows 8 were actually using it

...which is of course because

3) most of these early Windows 8 adopters weren't even interested in Windows 8, they just bought a license because of the incredible temporary price reduction. Many probably with the intention of selling the license on eBay at a nice profit once Microsoft's price reduction is over.

15 million people using a product advertised with a 1500 million budget would equate to Microsoft spending 100 dollars on every person using Windows 8 - which is several hundred percent of what these people actually paid for their Windows 8 license.

oh come now Kowen..you can tell me you sleep with your ipad under your pillow every night it still won't change a thing. I mean who are we kidding here...you are pretty much the same as the OP. Just for different companies. You keep focusing on bad financial info of companies like sony while only try to focus on the good of MS and Nokia which is now strongly related to them. 

So spare me ...I doubt anyone here, including you would believe otherwise given how you behave

The troubling thing about this is it's right after the big Windows 8 launch, as well as being so close to Xmas, so this should have brought in quite a few sales. Basically, the 2 1/2 year old Windows 7 last year was a bigger draw than the brand new Windows 8. Will be interesting to see the marketshare for phone and tablet OSs this quarter.

Is this NPD or Worldwide?

I highly doubt you're a better strategist than them, no offense but when was the last time they didn't make a Profit?  You seem to be desperately reaching defending a article that doesn't even fully validate its findings with all the figures.  

I decided the writer of this article is cherry picking data to try and represent what he would dearly like to be true.  

Man Im still using windows XP lol, Even though I just built this pc last year :P

I'll wait for some more official numbers rather than relying on some article written by someone with a rather clear anti MS bias who's using a total guesstimate for advertising budget and a percentage based on one region.