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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.

8 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. Misleading by rackhamh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But given that the personal computer market has nearly doubled since XP launched, Vista sales "probably should be more," said Michael Silver, vice president of research at Gartner, a technology research group.

    In summary: computer sales up; consumers forced to adopt Vista. Microsoft chuckles gleefully.

    1. Re:Misleading by jejones · · Score: 5, Interesting

      >Consumers don't have to rationalize buying Vista. If they're buying a new computer, they don't have a choice.

      Well... a week ago, an acquaintance said she was finally upgrading her computer (from one running Windows 98, with 64 Mbytes of RAM!), and wanted some advice, because she'd heard bad things about Vista. She'd heard of Linux, but had bought the line that one had to be a "nerd" to use it, so she was hoping to buy a computer with Windows XP; I didn't try to convince her otherwise. I did tell her that now that Vista has been released for the general public, basically any computer running Windows she buys now will have Vista on it. Based on that, she said a Macintosh was looking better and better, so I expect that's what she'll end up with.

      Of course, that's a lousy sample size, but I'm heartened somewhat that an average computer user is leery of moving to Vista.

  2. Spelling.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    MS Says Vista Selling At Twice XP's Price

    There. Fixed that for you.

  3. 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.
  4. Tag: Bullshit by ewhac · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The telling comment is here:

    20 million figure includes the backlog of upgrade coupons bundled with XP computers sold since last October.

    So Microsoft isn't quoting figures for sales spanning two months, but rather for more than five months, including at least three months of "pre-sales" in the form of coupons which likely may never be redeemed. If the coupon is never redeemed, then it can't be counted as a Vista sale, since Vista was never installed.

    More FUD from the masters. Which frankly doesn't surprise me. Without apps irrevocably tied to Vista, there's no impetus to "upgrade," and people will stay with XP. Microsoft is clearly desperate to make Vista appear to have a larger installed base than it does so that ISVs will commit to it.

    Schwab

    --
    Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
  5. Want to know how they are doing this?? by tgatliff · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I guarantee you that this was planned, and they are stuffing their product chain to provide these numbers. Basically for anyone who does not understand the process, it simply means that when they stock vendors, they are counting these items as "sold". This is a very common tactic, and was exactly what they did with the Zune... Meaning they have a history of using this manipulation tactic...

    Seeing as they did not say they were NOT doing this, I can assure you that they are. Dont believe me? Well, lets see when their quarterly report comes out... I will bet almost anything that it will be uneventful... :-)

  6. 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...
  7. 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