I have bought just weeks abo a Fujitsu notebook for my mother, with Windows 7. Perfect. I recommended to buy it now before the market has no notebooks with W7 in the wanted pricerange anymore. And indeed, in that price segment sufficient for my mother, the supply has run thin.
If I would find my sales numbers for W8 being in the cellar, I would focus on compensating that by pushing the sales for W7, too.
Dell has reported hurting losses in market shares in 2012 and already 2011, or analysts found that and reported it, i forgot which way it was. However, it explains why they are boasting with this amount of opportune optimism - it is their strategy to try stopping the trend. I doubt that reality backs them. Nokia was reporting "success!" in many in years when it already was in steep decline...
With prices going steeply upwards for W8 soon, the trend will not become better for MS. So far they have given it away almost for free... All people trying it because it was "free" (=very cheap), will then drop out of the statistics.
I personally know three people who tried W8. They all have abandoned it, cursing over the work they unloaded on themselves all for nothing...
Gamers will not follow it in large numbers. And business and office world will not, too. The chief designer of W8 "voluntarily was left" by MS, meanwhile - and soon after release. Possible that the air becomes very thin for Balmer, too.
What surprises me really is that the acceptance for phones and tablets is found to be extremely limited and far beyond expectations, too. Must be the lousy ergonomy.