Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

MS Says Vista Selling At Twice XP's Pace

Posted by kdawson on from the monopoly-will-do-that dept.

Several readers made us aware that Microsoft said today that it sold more than 20 million Windows Vista licenses in the first month after the OS's general debut on January 30. This compares to 17 million licenses of XP sold in the first two months after its release. (Just a coincidence the announcement came out a day after this community's speculation, surely.) Most of the coverage of this story, picked up from Reuters, looks like it follows an MS press release. The Associated Press dug deeper, noting that since XP's release the overall PC market has grown by almost a factor of 2, so it would be a surprise if Vista didn't do twice as well: "...51 million PCs were sold to consumers worldwide in 2002; this year... 96 million consumers will buy a computer." Also, Microsoft's 20 million figure includes the backlog of upgrade coupons bundled with XP computers sold since last October.

3 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. 20 million - 2 by NullProg · · Score: 5, Informative

    Two brand new Dell Dimension Workstations ($1200 each) came into our office last week. One remimaged to XP (SP2) because office user said Vista (Pro) was slower than crap. The other was regulated to the lab for dual-boot Redhat/SuSE client testing. Vista wiped clean off it.

    What Microsofts Marketing Machine states and what users do are two different things.

    Enjoy,

    --
    It's just the normal noises in here.
  2. Re:I would buy vista if... by Taimat · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you buy Vista Business, or Ultimate - you have downgrade rights to install XP Pro... This is what I am doing at my office. Every new PC that comes in with Vista - wiped and XP installed. Call up MS licensing, and they generate a key for you when you tell them you are downgrading. Perfectly legal and in the eula. This way, when we finally HAVE to go to vista, the licenses are ready and waiting, since the PCs came with them.

    --
    The above comments are not guaranteed to make sense to anyone other than the author...
  3. Look at the browser stats, wow! by nbritton · · Score: 5, Informative

    Vista release date Nov 8, 2006:    XP release date Oct 25, 2001:
    Vista at < 0.5% Dec 2006           XP at 4%, Nov 2001
    Vista at 0.6% Jan 2007             XP at 6.5%, Dec 2001
    Vista at 1.2% Feb 2007             XP at 9%, Jan 2002

    Can't wait till the Q1 SEC reports come out, ouch!

    sources:
    Google zeitgeist, w3schools, wikipedia