One of the things you have to realize that most people have desktop and/or laptop computers. Most run Windows XP or Windows 7 or OS X on it. Why upgrade? Why get rid something your used to using? If it's not broken, why fix it?
Don't expect people to buy PCs every month or every year. If your the person that does that, something's wrong. Of course tablets will sell because not many have one.
Is Windows dying? Well Windows 8, Windows RT and Windows Phone are. Personally I'm happy that they're dying because its a complete mess. Time to start from scratch. Windows 7 and Windows XP have a good amount of marketshare and they work just fine. Windows 8 came into the world just to make even more fragmentation and OEMs are stupid enough to listen to Microsoft.
Is Microsoft dying? That's funny but of course not. Anybody told Microsoft to fire Steve Ballmer already?
Let's pretend Windows 8 and Vista never existed. Windows XP > Windows 7 > Windows 9. We use odd numbers now.
Let's pretend Windows RT and Windows Phone didn't exist. Tablets and smartphones run Windows Mobile OS.
First off, the Windows Phone 8 is far more functional and easy to use than any Android.
I know this to be fact cause I have used both.
I happen to love my Windows Phone 8 and Surface Pro.
Both suit me extremely well.
Have you ever used one for more than 5 min? My guess is, no.
Could I use my Surface Pro for work? For my line of work, yes in many areas absolutely, in fact, far better than using any laptop.
The surface pro is far more functional device than any Ipad or Android tablet, especially for technical IT use.
Such as Trouble Shooting PC issues, and many other things. Would I use it for AutoCAD? no, well, maybe for presentation stuff.
Could it handle it? my guess (and I don't know for sure) probably decent enough, not as a primary system for it, but certainly for presentation.
If my work said which do I want, android, Ipad, Surface RT or Surface Pro, I will pick/demand the Surface Pro, or a Win8Pro Tablet of any kind.
They are powerful, diverse, functional, and extremely useful.
I can successfully run 3 Virtual Machines, access network resources, among many other things.
I really wish people would know what they are talking about before they attempt to trash things they apparently know nothing about.
As for Desktop, no, Desktop will not be going away anytime soon. In fact, my company has recently attempted to go back to terminal services and dumb terminals, which failed in our area, but seems to be working in others.
The desktop isn't going away, if MS abandons it, Linux will pick up the slack.