And the de-facto boycott by the potential customers contributes a lot.
It's difficult for MS. XP is still the second most popular Windows OS, with 38% market share in April. Why would anyone change his OS anyway? The migration from XP to 7, at least by professional users, is for better 64 bit support, not for any Aero gimmicks. Even in XP, professional users switched back to the classic view first time they logged in. They say the versatile PC is dying. I am sure they are right, at least for the home user. From my point of view, the NT line of OSes is on a par with Unix/Linux. But that professionalism is about the mechanics under the hood, not about superficial start screens. And that under the hood part is undergoing dramatic changes with that peculiar app sub-system which makes no sense at all to any pro user. Now, what are they going to do? Try to keep the pros happy and split their OS into one for consumers and one for pros? Or driving away the pros? Or going bust?