MS Says Vista Selling At Twice XP's Pace

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.

Comments

The PC market is larger now

[techmuse]

The PC market is considerably larger than it was when XP started shipping, so you would expect more sales. The question is what percentage of the market has purchased a vista upgrade or a new machine with vista compared to the same for XP? Note that nearly all consumer machines are now offered only with Vista. So given the choice between Vista and Vista, people who want a new machine are oddly choosing...Vista.

I would buy vista if...

[Lord Bitman]

if it came with XP, so I could run all the software I want to use.