Microsoft held its regular quarterly conference call with financial analysts today as part of its fourth quarter 2012 financial announcements. During the call and its follow up Q&A session, the company"s chief financial officer Peter Klein seemed very optimistic that Windows 8 growth would continue, despite outside reports of slow sales of the first Windows 8 specific products.
Klein hinted that the first sales of Windows 8 products by third parties were impacted by low supplies for certain PCs. That"s certainly true for products like Dell"s XPS 12 convertible laptop which, at the moment, is showing a February 11th ship date for orders placed today.
Klein said that this is just the start of the growth of Windows 8 in the PC marketplace and the feeling we got while listening to the conference call is that Microsoft believes that when more Windows 8 products are available, the more sales will rise for those PC. Indeed, a number of new Windows 8-based touchscreen laptops have already been announced for launch later this year, including the HP EliteBook Revolve tablet-notebook hybrid, shown above, that"s expected to launch sometime in March.
As far as Windows 8 apps, Klein said, "While the number of apps in the Windows Store quadrupled, we clearly have more work to do. We need more rich, immersive apps that give users access to content that inform, entertains and inspires."
All in all it was a rather unspectacular conference call with little in the way of new information. Microsoft seems to be saving big announcements for outside their financial result time period.
Source: Microsoft | Image via HP