In fact, their conference session was dubbed “Windows Is Collapsing: How What Comes Next Will Improve”. The first argument to back the rather harsh verdict was that the Microsoft-developed OS takes too much times in order to be ready for release. As you already know, Windows Vista took around 5 years to be completed and, when it was finally released, failed to sweep consumers to its side.

Besides being buggy and lacking the proper drivers, the analysts pointed out that Vista was missing heavily on the “genuine innovation” chapter. Consumers felt like the new OS was feeding them more or less the same things XP had been providing for year. The idea of spending several hundred $ on something that required more hardware power and offer just shiny graphics (the Aero interface) and several, but not so critical, improvements was not very appealing.

Furthermore, the Gartner analysts added, the time is not on Windows’ side. The emerging trend is now on web-based applications, which mean that the OS is to become less and less relevant. Do add the growing popularity of Linux distributions (with PC maker already offering or thinking about adding machines running open-source OSs) and you might get to the same conclusion: the time of a complex, hard to upgrade and power hungry OS has passed.

Vista will continue to slowly grow because Microsoft has the means to push further on the market, but the company must acknowledge that there’s no way up for its OS if they stick to the old business and development model.