Great news for Microsoft: Windows 8 grabs 2.3% of all Windows traffic after 48 days of availability
Web traffic from Windows 8 users constituted 2.3 percent of all Windows traffic exactly 48 days after its release. In comparison, Apple’s Mac OS X Mountain Lion captured 3.2 percent of OS X Web usage after just 48 hours. This is excellent news for Microsoft.
While pundits will be quick to point out that this means Mountain Lion was adopted much quicker than Windows 8, one has to step away from the percentage game to get the bigger picture. Microsoft’s share of the desktop operating system space is massive, meaning 2.3 percent of Windows traffic is many, many times higher than 3.2 percent of OS X traffic.
The latest figures come from Chitika Insights, which quantified its study of analyzing Windows 8′s share of Windows-based Web traffic since launch by examining “a sample of hundreds of millions of Windows impressions” from its ad network. Here is the result:
Chitika says Windows 8 Web traffic share peaked in early December 2012 and has has largely remained flat since then. The most recent share figures showed approximately 2.3 percent of Windows-based Web traffic coming from Windows 8 users.
Yet that’s to be expected as people go away for the holidays and so on. The real spike will come after everyone returns and starts using their new Windows 8 computers they received as presents.
We’ve noted before that Windows 8 is seeing lower Internet usage than Windows 7 did after one month, but that these are really early numbers, and there is just too much variability to account for. After a few months, or even better a year, we’ll be able to say for sure how the two compare.
In the meantime, the early figures that we do have show that Windows 8 is indeed selling just fine. It’s not doing spectacularly, but it’s also not a dud.
See also – One month in, Windows 8 is on track to easily outsell Windows 7 and The big fight begins: Windows XP drops below 40% market share while Windows 8 passes 1%
Image credit: Christa Richert
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Online Shoe Retailer Spartoo Marches On With €25 Million Series C, Led By Sofina, To Bolster European Growth
European online footwear and bag retailer, Spartoo — the ‘Zappos of Europe’ — has raised €25 million ($32.5 million) in Series C funding led by Belgian investment holding company Sofina. Existing investors A Plus Finance, CM-CIC Capital Privé, Highland Partners and Endeavour Vision also participated in the round. The company has raised €45 Million to date, since being founded back in 2006.
Spartoo said it plans to use the new funding to sustain “aggressive expansion” across the European market. The company is now profitable in its core French market, and has ramped up to become one of Europe’s largest online shoes and accessories retailers — using free and fast deliveries and returns to encourage shoppers to buy two million pairs of shoes last year in the 20 European countries in which it’s active.
Unique site visitors to Spartoo now number more than 12 million per month — up from more than 4 million unique back in 2009 — and the company has seen its international turnover multiply 20-fold over the past three years. The site offers shoppers a selection of more than 30,000 models from more than 700 brands.
See more here: Online Shoe Retailer Spartoo Marches On With €25 Million Series C, Led By Sofina, To Bolster European Growth
Financial Planning Startup Wealthfront Woos Silicon Valley Workers With A Once-Secret Investment Trick
Wealthfront, a Palo Alto-based startup that wants to democratize wealth management, is giving users access to a once-exclusive investment trick called tax loss harvesting that lets them boost their long-term returns.
It sounds wonky, but the strategy basically entails selling poorly performing investments at the end of the year so that they can be written off against gains in a portfolio, reducing an overall tax bill. (There’s a video that explains it below.)
Wealthfront says that this technique can boost after-tax returns by more than 1 percent a year. Over 20 years, that could be more than $50,000 more in returns on a $100,000 portfolio.
“We’ve always wanted to bring what premier endowments and wealth managers do to the masses,” said CEO Andy Rachleff, who also co-founded one of the Valley’s better-known venture firms Benchmark Capital. “Tax-loss harvesting used to be done all manually and it was only available to people with $10 to 20 million.”
Offering tax-loss harvesting is yet another lure for potential customers. Wealthfront, which used to be known as Kaching and was a social investment site, changed strategies over the past few years to offer low-cost, long-term investment management services.
Based on your age and risk tolerance, the site will recommend a certain balance between higher-risk investments like stocks and lower-risk ones like bonds. It takes a lower management fee of around 0.25 percent (instead of the 1 to 1.5% rate a mutual fund might charge.)
They can offer lower-management fees by automatically offering a mix of investments in exchange-traded funds (which have lower fees). Wealthfront doesn’t get any affiliate revenue for recommending certain funds over others, so Rachleff says this makes them relatively unbiased.
Rachleff says assets under management are growing at roughly 15 percent month over month (but he’s not disclosing the raw amount.) He says that the site’s largest accountt is $2.5 million and the smallest is $5,000. The average is around $50,000.
The 20-person startup is focused on growing clientele among Silicon Valley’s “working” class, like engineers and product managers that want to manage their savings or recent windfalls from acquisitions or IPOs.
The thinking is that these types of customers will be more comfortable having another startup manage part of their savings. That’s why Wealthfront has been doing these savvy and very viral infographics on startup compensation.
“If you’re fortunate enough to work for a successful company, we can manage the investment of those proceeds and do it in a really high-quality and low-cost fashion,” Rachleff said.
What is Tax-Loss Harvesting? from Wealthfront on Vimeo.
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AmazonSupply Debuts As A E-Commerce Vertical For Industrial Materials, Mechanical Parts And Hardware
Amazon is debuting a new vertical today, called AmazonSupply, which is a new site for mechanical parts and other hardware for business and industrial sectors. Amazon says the site sells over 500,000 items, including bench-top centrifuges commonly found in laboratories, radiation detectors designed for environmental testing, and carbide end mills used to machine titanium.
AmazonSupply aims to fulfill the parts and supply needs of the business, industrial, scientific and commercial. Customers can shop for items by product, material and brand across 14 categories, including Lab & Scientific, Test, Measure & Inspect, Occupational Health & Safety, Janitorial & Sanitation, Office, Fleet & Vehicle Maintenance, Power & Hand Tools, Fasteners, Power Transmission and more.
Amazon says that most orders of $50 or more receive free two-day shipping. In addition, AmazonSupply will offer 365 day returns, and corporate lines of credit and a dedicated customer service center.
The site has some crossover with Invetables, an online marketplace for technical materials and hardware.
Getting into B2B supplies is interesting for Amazon, considering its e-commerce initiatives have been more consumer-focused. With AmazonSupply, the e-commerce giant is expanding to a whole new set of professional and business customers, including those in the construction, mechanics, automobile, and research industries.
Read more here: AmazonSupply Debuts As A E-Commerce Vertical For Industrial Materials, Mechanical Parts And Hardware
Apple, Philippe Starck To Reveal “Revolutionary” Project Prior To Christmas
$10 says it’s an iPhone 5 case.
AFP is reporting Philippe Stark and Apple have teamed up on a project that Starck called “fairly, if not very, revolutionary.” The project is said to drop in time for Christmas.
However that’s where the fun info stops. No other details were given including the nature or scope of this so-called revolutionary project. It could anything from a new consumer product to a “revolutionary” design element of the new Apple HQ. And for what it’s worth, Apple already has their own powerhouse designer in Sir Jonathan Ive.
Starck himself revealed this info to a French radio station today. It’s unclear if it was an unintentional slip or an announcement sanctioned by Apple. But Starck apparently knows Apple. Several of his products are sold in Apple Stores. In fact the designer revealed that he had a personal relationship with Steve Jobs. The two apparently met on a monthly basis for seven years and Starck still returns to Palo Alto to see Laurene Jobs.
Nearly anything could come of this partnership. Starck’s designs and products range from street lights to cutlery to headphones to super yachts. The man and his design firm are apparently comfortable rethinking nearly anything — just like Apple. But if it’s true that said upcoming project is supposed to hit before Christmas, the most important retail time of year, then it’s likely a new consumer product. The Apple HDTV? Perhaps.
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