Welcome Windows 8 to a Post-Desktop World

A lot has changed in the three years since the last major Windows announcement. Netbooks were on the rise. The iPad wouldn’t be introduced for another six months and Nokia still had the lead for most smartphone sales in the world. Only 172 million smartphones were sold in 2009 vs. an estimated 146 million units in just one quarter of this year. Without wide adoption of tablets or smartphones, Microsoft still dominated the world of personal computing. Linux, while popular in the server room, was virtually non-existent in consumer products, except for its brief rise in netbooks before Microsoft reportedly pressured its OEMs to stop production and shift back to Windows.