[Don't hold your breath. Tablets will soon dominate PC sales. Putting Metro on Windows 8 is about getting people used to what MS will use on Tablets. If people become used to the look and feel of metro, then they will be more likely to get a MS tablet, vs another tablet with a different OS. They have the obvious market share of PC, and they know that market is getting smaller.]
True, the market will indeed get smaller. But whether tablets will dominate PC sales, it is too early to tell. Basically it will end up working like this: tablets is a nice companion to PC/notebook, as it enable the user to carry a light computing devices which main use is for media consumption. When Apple create this device, it is filling a void that no devices in the market is meeting such need. At the moment, we are seeing big sales figures for tablets, with sales mostly going to people who do not have such devices yet. And it is a big market void to fill that Apple is reaping most of the rewards at the moment. Repeat sales will happen when this device category improves in capabilities. But soon the device capabilities will hit a wall where incremental improvements are not attractive enough to warrant a repeat sales. Then people will most likely only buy tablets when the old one broke down. This is the state PC industry has been in for quite some time. When tablet become a mature market, the sales figures will drop to a more constant replacment figure. And then the actual split of the market is decided by how many people actually are satisfied with using tablets alone, vs the number of people that feel desktop/notebook suit their needs more. By the way, corporate world will never use tablets as main computing resources, not unless tablets can have the same processing power as current desktops and servers. My belief is due to the corporate world owning more machines then home users, the desktop/notebook market share will end up be larger than tablets.
[MS is looking to the future at the expense of what people believe they want in a current OS.]
MS should have done more to make touch UI works better for existing legacy application instead follow Apple like another sheep. I have tried Windows 8, on many newly released Windows 8 hybrid and tablets. And trying to use legacy application using the touch interface alone is still a very painful experience. I could see there are plenty of things Microsoft and hardware vendor could have done to make legacy application easier to use, but Microsoft has merely adopted the Apple UI approach and put up a new windowing system called Metro as the solution, and largely ignore what they can do to improve the touch UI concept. In essence, they did not dare to invent something better and choose to merely follow what Apple has successfully done in their product line. Their sales figure would have been much better if they can show the world touch UI can be easy to use even on x86 legacy applications.
The issue with touch UI on legacy applications are:
(1) it is not easy to click on the correct location to trigger a menu, or small button, or small icon. I tried it with finger or stylus, but just do not have the precise control to trigger the action you need accurately from time to time.
(2) some mouse events cannot be simulate in current touch UI. For example, mouse move event. That would be interpreted as a swipe gesture instead of mouse move in traditional window behavior.
(3) Not easy to simulate right click. You need to use click and hold method, or two finger press, which is slow. Combine this with (1) and it becomes quite annoying.
(4) Virtual keyboard cover too much of the screen, from time to time hiding the content that you need to see to enter the response properly.
All of these annoying issues, can be improved. I thought there are many smart people working in Microsoft, I do not know why none of them ever took a look at this and made improvements in their years of development. I think many people would be able to come up with new UI approach to address issues such as this, but they have to see beyond what Apple UI has done.
I believe, a touch interface that is friendly to interact with legacy applications, is a crucial feature for Microsoft in order for them to catch up in the tablets market.
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