Stories being released over the last few days are citing Microsoft’s planned announcement for the next incarnation of its flagship Windows OS.

At this years BUILD conference, to be held at the start of April in San Francisco, it is expected Microsoft will discuss its future vision of Windows. During this conference it is also expected that more information about the next release, codenamed by Microsoft as “Threshold”, will be announced.

Writing on his blog last week, Paul Thurrott, states that Microsoft are likely to move away from the codename and name the OS Windows 9, in an attempt to move away from the flunked Windows 8 brand. As Thurrott himself states here “Windows 8 is tanking harder than Microsoft is comfortable discussing in public, and the latest release, Windows 8.1, which is a substantial and free upgrade with major improvements over the original release, is in use on less than 25 million PCs at the moment. That’s a disaster…” 

Writing on his blog for UK research firm Tech Market View, Richard Holway states the consumers he has spoken to about Windows 8 are “appalled” by it, also stating that manufacturers are seeing client still purchasing Windows 7 as their preference. The end of his article sums up “Let’s be honest, the Windows 8 debacle was totally predictable. Indeed, WE predicted it would be a disaster right from the start! W8 only served to accelerate the move to tablets and away from Microsoft. Balmer (MS CEO) truly has a lot to answer for”. The full article can be read here. This argument is supported by the fact that Microsoft’s stock share value went up significantly upon the news of Ballmer’s resignation.

So it will be interesting to see the plans for the future of one of the world’s biggest household names hit hard by its flagging operating system. Data published on the computerworld.com website quotes Net Applications research showing Windows 8 and 8.1 accounting for just 10.5% of OS’s currently used on computers. This accounted for 11.6% of computers running any form of Windows.

The real question is; who will be looking forward to Windows 9 more? Microsoft themselves, hit by dismal sales and a damaged reputation, or loyal Windows customers, hit by a dismal OS and frustration.