Windows 8 PC Orders Are Weak

Computer sellers have scaled back their expectations of the sales pop they'll get from Windows 8 this year. Brian White, of Topeka Capital Markets, said that his checks of Asian computer manufacturers - the relatively unknown firms that build desktop and notebook PCs to specifications issued by the likes of Hewlett-Packard and Dell - found that orders last month climbed by less than half the average of the last seven years.

With all of the sales numbers out for the ODM Barometer, October sales rose by 2% month-over-month and below the average performance of up 5% over the past seven years. This is weaker than the preliminary estimate of up 5% month-over-month in October and speaks to the continued challenges in the PC market. White's ODM Barometer - ODM for "original device manufacturer" - is a metric of sales by the Asian companies that assemble PCs for brand-name computer sellers. It does not show sales of those PCs to buyers, but hints at the orders those computer sellers have placed for inventory.