Vista's 40 Million License Sales In Context

Overly Critical Guy writes "Microsoft's figure of 40 million Vista OEM licenses sold has less impact when weighed against the expanded size of the PC market, according to IDC numbers. The myriad of factors involved in determining success in the market makes Microsoft's constant comparisons to Windows XP less reliable as a growth indicator — particularly with Microsoft refusing to reveal the number of actual activated Vista licenses. 'HP reported year-over-year PC sales growth of about 24 percent, or about twice worldwide PC sales growth. Whatever HP is doing right, it's more than just Vista ... If Microsoft wasn't so hung up on XP comparisons as the benchmark, it could really demonstrate that Vista sales are increasing. The first 20 million figure really represented four months of sales, and that could have been positive data because Microsoft protected its customers' holiday investments. For free! Instead of making that point, Microsoft got carried away with making comparisons back to XP.'"

Comments

Did the world end ?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

I have one thing to say for microsoft selling 40 million vista licences in a week :

Well done

Because it is well done. I'm sure they're not playing entirely fair, but still, it's their success, they built it, they earned the reward for it. And it does look nice. Let them have their reward.

I'm a linux man myself. I doubt that will ever change. But I feel no need whatsoever to destroy microsoft.

Re:Did the world end ?

[GuyverDH]

It wasn't well done, or earned. It was blackmail pure and simple. Look, in the course of contract negotiations, all of the major PC vendors want the best possible price for an OS license. In order to get that best price, Microsoft has, in the past, forced the vendor to purchase a license for every machine sold, regardless of the OS to be installed. Even if you ordered your Dell or Gateway with RedHat/Ubuntu/whatever pre-loaded, the vendor would have to purchase a Windows license for that machine. If they didn't agree to those terms, they didn't get their price break, and may have been threatened with being left out of the OEM program altogether, meaning they'd have to buy full retail versions for each machine. No vendor could survive having to pay $200-$300 for Windows, and more for Office to include on their $600 pc.

Re:Did the world end ?

[GuyverDH]

The above information was obtained directly from an ex-employee of an OEM that was involved in the contract negotiations with Microsoft.

Re:Did the world end ?

[loconet]

"I feel no need whatsoever to destroy microsoft."

As a Linux user, who also makes a living out of using Linux as a tool every day, I don't find myself sharing the same feeling. When Microsoft threatens not only my work, my income, but also my way of life, I can't help to see the need to see Microsoft completely destroyed. It's a funny thing, this "evolved" survival instinct. It is hard to ignore.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Reliant-1864]

I bought a pre-installed Vista machine and replaced it with XP. Being a monopoly on the PC, sales are bound to go up for Vista simple because people are buying PCs, and Vista is coming with it. That their Vista sales are lower than PC sales, in addition to counting the sales, shows just how many PCs are shipping without Vista, the supposed default. When Microsoft has a 94% market, why are their Vista sales only accounting for half of the PCs?

If you want to see numbers on popularity, try and get the numbers on people buying boxed Vista, and compare it to people who bought boxed XP. I seem to remember boxed XP flying off the shelves for people wanting to upgrade, but who's buying boxed Vista? Microsoft won't release those numbers because it will show how much of a flop Vista has been, and its only because of their monopoly that it's getting sold at all. Vista is a huge example on the amount of damage Microsoft is inflicting on the industry by having a stranglehold on the OS that ships. They're forcing people to pay for an inferior product on purchasing a PC, then charging them for XP when they want to replace it

Re:Did the world end ?

[Bamafan77]

It wasn't well done, or earned. It was blackmail pure and simple. Look, in the course of contract negotiations, all of the major PC vendors want the best possible price for an OS license. In order to get that best price, Microsoft has, in the past, forced the vendor to purchase a license for every machine sold, regardless of the OS to be installed.

I never quite understood this bit of criticism about Microsoft. Blackmail is when you threaten to tell someone's spouse that he/she cheated on them unless they give you a million dollars. MS signed a contract saying that they'd offer discounts IF they didn't sell competing products. There is nothing evil about this. If you don't like the terms, walk. If you can't survive without the price breaks, why is that MS's problem?

And why are we feeling sorry for people like Michael Dell, again? Lest we forget, this man became a multi billionaire largely due to the "blackmail" contracts he signed with Microsoft. Gateway also made billions in sales from MS contracts.

Re:Did the world end ?

[lawpoop]

Because the contract was negotiated by a monopoly. You don't have a choice when you're dealing with a monopoly. It's not a free market scenario, because there is no competition.

In a free market, you can say, "I don't like the terms your offering me; change them or I will go with the other guy." In a monopolized market, you either get it *at their price* or you don't. There is no negotiation or exchange. It's a dictation of the terms. In our market, MS is the sole provider of a usable Windows API.

7 articles on Vista sales

[suv4x4]

If my memory serves right, this is the 7-th article talking about Vista sales alone. Not Vista bugs, not Vista speed, not Vista features, just Vista's initial sales.

I think I speak for the majority of Slashdot's readers, that we don't fucking care about Vista's sales that much.

They mean nothing and the actual trend will be known in 8-9 months from now (you can be sure Vista will see decent adoption either way, because if it doesn't Microsoft will be forced to address the worst problems in a SP).

So please stop wasting our time with this. We can live on without reading yet again about Vista's sales, in context, or out of it.

Re:7 articles on Vista sales

[goombah99]

Time to say Hasta La Vista, Baby.

Re:7 articles on Vista sales

[heinousjay]

I'm with you, dude. This is beating off a dead horse.

Re:7 articles on Vista sales

[u-bend]

Talk about niche pr0n. Horses are common enough, but dead ones? Whew, my world just got a little bigger.

Why is this here?

[gr8_phk]

Not many on slashdot care a whole lot about Vista sales.
Even fewer care what MS marketing says about Vista sales.
Nobody cares what someone else says about what MS says about Vista sales.

Re:Why is this here?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

So that makes your post "what someone says about what someone says about what MS says about Vista sales", which makes my post "what someone says about what someone says about what someone says about what MS says about Vista sales"...

The PC world still turns...

[mollog]

Microsoft selling software is like Exxon selling gasoline. Except that Exxon has better sense than to brag about their monopoly.

But this is a case of "...methinks the lady doth protest too much..."; Microsoft is worrying about losing their monopoly to free software (linux, especially linux servers) and better software (Apple's OS). The louder they talk about market share, but more suspicious it looks.

To me, there are some other pretty important developments that have been going on, such as yesterday's report here on Slashdot about the NYSE replacing IBM mainframes with IBM AIX and with Linux.

I don't know how many people were around when Microsoft successfully spiked the Unix market with their FUD about workstation NT running on RISC processors. At the time, the Unix server and workstation companies were talking about converging their various flavors of Unix. This would have allowed more and better cross-platform compatibility of distributed application software. Microsoft countered with a campaign to run Windows NT on RISC processors as an alternative. DEC, HP and others squandered resources on this effort and the Unix market withered. Microsoft's campaign even had consulting businesses like Gartner Group predicting that NT would replace both Unix and the mainframe in a few years time. HP even went so far as to try to munge its PA RISC processor with the Intel x86 processor (Itanium) with the goal of running both x86 and Unix code on one platform. Intel never delivered on the early promises of that project, but they got HP's processor technology for their troubles.

Looking back, you have to hand it to Microsoft for the brilliant way they marginalized Unix. Problem is, they never did supply a replacement server platform except for some lousy versions of NT on Intel processors (And into that void slips Linux.)

I'm guessing that Windows XP represents the peak of Microsoft's work. Vista was years late, and the future of processors; cell, multi-core, distributed computing, internet-based applications, cell phone computers - will be beyond Microsoft's narrow, one-user/one-cpu, world view. Office productivity software has matured, gaming programming is moving onto GPUs and Microsoft's operating system is becoming less and less relevant.