So about those supposedly weak Windows 8 sales...what happens next?

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Steve Ballmer strikes a power pose at last month's BUILD conference for developers.

Credit: IDGNS

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Last Friday, longtime Microsoft reporter Paul Thurfott reported that one of his "most trusted sources" at Microsoft told him early sales of Windows 8 are not meeting Microsoft's internal expectations. This source blamed lackluster adoption by PC makers, and Thurrott added his own speculative reasons, like the confusing messaging about Windows 8 vs Windows RT and the "two-in-one" desktop/touch interface.

Single-sourced stories should always be taken skeptically -- somebody might have had political or personal reasons to leak or spin the information.

But Thurrott's report added weight to the lukewarm comments HP's Todd Bradley had about the operating system last week -- for instance, Bradley told CITEworld he expects Windows 8 adoption to have a "slower ramp" than past upgrade cycles "because touch is such a big piece of it" and said, "if you look at retail orders, what we built with touch related to Windows 8, touch is a small percentage of that."

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Then today, Computerworld reports, analyst Brian White of Topeka Capital Partners said that channel checks of Asian manufacturers saw a slower rate of order growth in October than in previous years. Usually, with a new Windows release, the opposite happens -- PC makers place more orders in anticipation of higher demand.

It's early days. Windows 8 has been on sale for less than a month. And Microsoft does not plan its Windows business to spike or goose revenues for a single quarter, or even a year. Windows is a long play, meant to respond to sweeping market changes and keep the entire PC upgrade cycle rolling for years.

Even so. Sometimes where there's smoke, there's fire. 

So what if the reports are true and Windows 8 continues to have weak sales for the next quarter or two? What happens next? Here's a likely series of events: