Vista Sales Strong, Higher Than Expected

An anonymous reader writes "Despite reports, it seems Microsoft is not only alive, but has been thriving these last few months. Following Apple's solid earnings yesterday comes above-expectation reporting from Microsoft. Profits jumped 65% from the previous year, and sales of its Windows operating system were strong: 'Microsoft said it deferred $1.2 billion in Windows Vista revenue to the third quarter, to account for upgrade coupons given to PC buyers during the holiday season before the consumer launch of the new operating system. Excluding this figure, client revenue totaled $4.1 billion, 30 percent higher than last year.' Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said Vista beat internal forecasts by $300 million to $400 million, and Office 2007 sales were $200 million better than expected."

Comments

Well it figures

[Chris whatever]

it figures that sales are higher than last year, XP is not new and is installed mostly everywhere,,,Vista aint, so if we compare growth and sales Vista will surpass sales for Xp since most of every windows users already own a copy of XP and dont need to purchase it every 6 month

Sketchy figures...

[Theaetetus]

Microsoft said it deferred $1.2 billion in Windows Vista revenue to the third quarter, to account for upgrade coupons given to PC buyers during the holiday season before the consumer launch of the new operating system.

So are they counting upgrade coupons as full sales? What if they're never used?
Also, not once do they mention the number of units sold to consumers. Are they including units shipped to stores in their figures, like book publishers do? "We sold 10 million units! 9 million were returned unsold by the stores, however..."

Expectations

[webrunner]

Didn't they lower their expectations in January? And now they're saying it's higher than expectations? How does that work?