Gartner Analysts Share Bleak Outlook On Vista By Doug Caverly - Fri, 04/11/2008 - 9:33am. Windows as a whole in serious trouble, too Vista is crap, according to a number of users; Google gives over 20,000 results for that exact phrase. And thanks to Vista, two Gartner analysts have gone so far as to say that Windows is collapsing. "For Microsoft, its ecosystem and its customers, the situation is untenable," stated Michael A. Silver and Neil MacDonald at a recent conference. "Windows as we know it must be replaced." The next version of Windows is already being discussed, of course, but its release is probably two or more years away. In the meantime, Microsoft's stuck. Adoption of Vista has, from any sane point of view, lingered somewhere between "embarrassing" and "terrible." Numerous pushes to keep XP alive haven't made the situation any better.
Clothing, electronics succeed Following the holiday bonanza, January can be a dead month for many retailers. Recent numbers from Nielsen revealed the ten companies that best survived (in terms of online conversion rates) the quiet time. Other businesses should be able to learn something from the retailers' success, although, to be fair, there are definitely some seasonal patterns at work. L.L. Bean.com placed first, for example (with a conversion rate of 23.6 percent), and its cold-weather clothing surely drove a large part of its success. Another clothing provider, J. Jill, nabbed the second spot, and then Proflowers came in third. People preparing for the spring planting season no doubt contributed to its 17.8 percent conversion rate. And let's not forget the flowers-and-jewelry-and-cards holiday that occurs in February.
Forecast: Electronics Sales Down In Q4 -- CDs, DVDs To Follow Peter Kafka | October 11, 2007 9:03 AM Retail trend tracker NPD Group predicts that electronics sales will be down in Q4. From Crains: Only 38% of the nearly 2,000 customers surveyed plan to buy electronics during the all-important fourth-quarter shopping season this year. That’s a sharp downturn from 2006, when 51% of customers surveyed bought electronics. “The consumer, for the last two years, looked at electronics because there were new products driving business, whether it was big-screen TVs or iPods,” says Marshal Cohen, chief analyst at NPD. “This year, it’s really about upgrading what you already have, and that’s not going to drive customers into the stores.”
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