No. It is not. Windows still sells millions of computers and everyone uses it, from households to corporations. It's here to stay for a very long time.
Yep. A lot of people here have trouble discerning between their _own_ personal experience and the needs of the rest of the world. I don't even use Windows, but I know plenty of people using it, and I don't see them either spending money on a Mac or switching to a tablet or a Chromebook. And I don't see many workplaces switching to Chromebooks either.
Microsoft has built a good and cheap platform for workplaces PCs and households, that's the reality. The only two real alternatives I can see right now are OS X and some well supported GNU/Linux distros like Ubuntu/Red Hat/Suse, and both have their own disadvantages (the former a significant higher cost in hardware, the latter a lack of commonly used pro software like MS Office, Adobe programs, AutoCAD and other specialized software...)
True. Most of this site's visitors probably live in the US or maybe Western Europe. Extrapolating what they see around them to the rest of the world is silly. I for instance live in a country where the exact opposite conclusions can be made at least compared to a lot of posts in this thread: OSX? Non-existant, probably more so than Desktop linux installations. Chromebooks? No one has seen them. Windows Phone? Doing fine and is second in sales after Android. Apple's iOS? Sometimes can be spotted in the wild, but it's not popular at all.
I actually live in India. My generation sometimes doesn't even own computers, so much so that the biggest local e-commerce retailer is shutting down its desktop website.
Linux also has excellent professional tools, maybe even better because they are opensource. Libre Office is as good as MS Office. AutoCAD has the FreeCAD alternatively. For all Adobe programs there is an alternative. Look at h "alternativeto.net".
'Dying' is not 'Dead'. Not yet... but desktop sales are in decline(1), and windows on mobile is a failure.
If you want to call it 'Windows is in decline' instead of 'Windows is dying', sure, we can call it that instead.
...but it's effectively the same thing. Don't bet on this platform; it's not the future. Sure, it'll still be around for the foreseeable future, but you win when you bet on things that experience year-over-year growth, not year-over-year decline.
You can call the growth-hackers nasty names if you want, but its undeniable that there's a strong correlation between growth and success.
My bet? Microsoft won't fail. They'll find other things (services in the cloud perhaps) to grow; but windows will consistently decline over time while it fails to gain traction in the mobile space. /shrug
Looking at numbers from IDC, they've declined the last several years.
Combined with erosion of pricing power, OS licensing isn't the glorious business it used to be for Microsoft (it's still worth billions of dollars though).
Well, we could argue about it, but how about you go and read the Intel Q1 2015 earnings statement(2), have a think about how daft those guys must have been to have missed the obvious short term decline in sales leading up to the Windows 10 launch.
...but hey, don't take my word for it. There are plenty of other 5 year forecasts out there; just pick up a few and do some background reading.
(2) http://www.intc.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=906520 "Year-over-year revenues were flat, with double-digit revenue growth in the data center, IoT and memory businesses offsetting lower than expected demand for business desktop PCs," said Intel CEO Brian Krzanich. "These results reinforce the importance of continuing to execute our growth strategy. "
The future is a full powered, general purpose OS that runs on all kinds of devices - not a limited, walled-garden OS that only runs on low powered hardware.
People who actually need their computer to do things other than play Angry Birds are not going to be satisfied living in a walled garden.
As if businesses aren't just groups of individuals... As if people don't need general purpose computing to do business... As if there were another general purpose OS that is going to beat Windows...
iOS and Android are basically toys compared to Windows and next to nobody is using OS X, so what's your prediction?
>next to nobody is using OS X, so what's your prediction?
Depends if in "nobody" you include: almost every student in a modern US university, almost the majority of top-tier programmers in any programming convention (from Java to Rails and from Python to C++ and Go), almost all creatives (designers, musicians and video editors), and almost all business executives.
Of course that's for the US. Finland and Kazakstan might differ.
No. It is not. Windows still sells millions of computers and everyone uses it, from households to corporations. It's here to stay for a very long time.