I would suggest a look at production numbers for the Surface and projected sales of OEM Windows 8 licenses. I think "risk" is a bit of a dramatic interpretation, but that's just my opinion.
How will these translate to actual sales? If Microsoft ships a lot of OEM devices and the manufacturer's channels are stuffed but don't sell - it won't help them at all in the long run.
I wish that instead of shoving MetroUI in the user's face by not allowing you to launch directly into desktop shell, they would have done something like Apple's Camera lockscreen slider - it teases you and is there at the bottom, but if you want you can ignore it completely.
Microsoft should win by letting users completely ignore their ground-up rethink of the user interaction model for computing that they're betting the company on. The one that is their only chance of catching up to iOS and Android. The one that, if it fails, will spell the end of their dominance in computing forever.
Sure, why wouldn't they want everyone to just ignore that? No big deal.
Is everyone missing the point? I don't know how else to say it, the percent of overall sales of Windows laptop/tablets from Microsoft is likely to be very small. I think it's simply wrong to act like the OEMs are cowering.
