According to a senior executive at the popular Newegg.com retailer, the Windows 8 launch has been slow so far and it hasnt been the explosion that the company was originally hoping for. Instead, Windows 8 is seeing slow and steady sales. Newegg believes that Windows 8 will take off in sales about the second quarter of 2013.
“So we planned with our partners to be prepared for an explosion. Did we really believe there was going to be one? Even within our own building, there were some people that thought that this was going to be the next coming of God, and other people were saying, this will be the next coming of God, but not until next year sometime. What we wanted to make sure with our own customers and our own business is that we were ready for any event. So yes, we were prepared for some pretty big upside on the software side of the equation, and the hardware side of the equation, and it is has been steadily improving. But it did not explode, as I think you know, coming out of the gate,” Merle McIntosh stated, the senior vp of product management at Newegg. Newegg has no plans to offer discounts for Windows 8, unlike other retailers who plan on doing so to accelerate sales during the holiday season. Newegg still has hopes to sell over “six figures of units” this quarter and hopes that the majority of those sales are Windows 8. At the moment, the majoring of Windows 8 device sales are coming from notebooks and desktop PCs, and not that many tablets. “From a Windows 8 software perspective, we might be doing some short-burst promotions. … We’re hearing stories that the $69 package [to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro] is going to get into the $20 range at some point here in the quarter, and we’re just not inclined to play there. We may do some things prior to Black Friday, but we’re not going to go wading into that. We don’t think we need to,” McIntosh added.