Still reeling with over-production, swelling inventories, and spot-prices on free-fall, the DRAM industry had been banking on Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system launch to come to their salvation. Apparently, it didn't. As is customary with each new Windows launch, orders for DRAM components go up, as PC makers announce new products, and consumers purchase new RAM to upgrade their systems. Windows 8, which is essentially based on the same (albeit slightly tweaked) kernel as Windows 7, isn't really heavier on system resources. Let alone that, Windows 8 in itself is not expected to bring consumers to get a new PC, because Microsoft made it extremely simple and cheap to upgrade Windows 7 to 8. The industry's only real hope now is for hardware makers Intel, AMD, and ARM to introduce platforms that make use of DDR4 DRAM.