Microsoft Sees Stronger XP Sales in FY08

Rude Awakening wrote with a PC World article, saying that XP sales will actually be higher next year than they were in 2007. Despite Vista's release, Microsoft admitted this week that it expects the previous version of its operating system to make up a larger percentage of its OS sales in 2008. "According to Liddell, Microsoft will generate the same revenue, more or less, under the new Vista vs. XP numbers, although there might be some slight differences because Vista sales have tended to involve more of the higher-priced versions, dubbed premium by the company, than has XP. The financial forecast didn't spell out that directly, however. The only clue was a US$120 million difference in what Microsoft pegged as the 'undelivered elements' it assigned to unearned income for the coming year."

Comments

A couple reasons for this

[LehiNephi]

I can think of a couple reasons why XP sales would be higher, both related to the release of Vista. First, you have people who don't want to switch (rather than "upgrade" or "downgrade"--I'm trying not to troll) to Vista, and so they're buying XP while they still can. Secondly, you have people buying computers with Vista, deciding they don't like it, and buying a license of XP instead. And on top of that, many of the Tier 1 OEMs still offer XP as an option. Sometimes it's the default option. And sometimes it's the only option.

I'll admit that this is pure speculation, but if true, I find it interesting that the release of the new, "better than ever" version of a product is driving sales of the old (but still serviceable) version. It kinda reminds me of when Linksys came out with their WRT54G v.5.

Re:A couple reasons for this

[sapgau]

Agreed, the other big reason is that corporate users haven't switched to Vista. I still haven't heard of any of our customers planning on Vista yet. If they take months before releasing a security update or service pack for XP, I can't see how they could be preparing for Vista now.

At the very minimum corporate users will wait until their lease expires on their Dells and then will see if they demand XP to be included in their new machines!!!

Re:A couple reasons for this

[fastest fascist]

Your first point doesn't really hold water. What were these people supposedly buying XP "while they can" running before? I don't see Linux people suddenly deciding they need XP because of Vista's arrival, and everyone else will have been running windows on PCs anyway, be it XP or 2000, and the 2000 crowd tend to be the type who made a conscious choice to stick to that OS instead of XP. I guess if someone somewhere was running Windows 95 or something on a PC capable of running XP, they might buy XP while they still can.

Re:A couple reasons for this

[evilbessie]

Unless of course you are stupid enough (seriously why are they still shipping Core Solo machines running vista, because that's not a good experience of Vista) to buy a VAIO which ONLY have Vista drivers, damn stupid Sony, yet another reason not to give them money.

Re:A couple reasons for this

[aborchers]

Exactly. The corporate world is always miles behind. My company is just still malingering on 2K on a lot of boxes, just now getting to XP. Big companies are not known for leaping forward into new and unproven technologies, especially when most of the improvement is just user eye-candy.

Re:A couple reasons for this

[jellomizer]

Even without the slashdot tolling but from ordinary non-computer people. People are having a lot of problems with Vista. The Technical People say it is slow. But the non-technical people are having a hell of a time getting their old software, hardware to work. Microsoft when making Vista was way to ambitious at the start of the project (Longhorn Days) so we are getting pieces that were designed to work with more advanced other sections that hasn't been added... Say for example the Mythical WinFS Which allows for a lot of faster reading, So many components were probably designed with that in mind and used some extra disk activity to do work because with WinFS it was faster, but then they dropped WinFS from the OS so now we have code that is doing more disk reads then it would do otherwise thus bog the system down.

Besides proLinux and proMac Feeling. Windows XP is now actually a decent OS that is stable. Lately I have been seeing more Macs semitransparent Black Screen of death then Windows Blue Screens of death (Although to be fair it is often because I am using Parallels to boot windows on my Mac). The fact that it hasent had a major upgrade in 6 years now actually makes it a pretty fast OS which modern software supports.
Much like how in the early 90s how X-Windows had a bad name because of all the resources it use, and windows 3.1 was much lighter... Then Ten and a half years later X-Windows is the lightweight.

Re:A couple reasons for this

[NeoTron]

I, for one, run Linux practically exclusively on my machines. However, my sister-in-law, for example, wanted to purchase a new laptop. Now, the particular model she wanted came with Vista, but I advised her to get the shop to install XP instead, for numerous reasons (the incompatibility with a lot of older programs, drivers, etc. (I'm too lazy to list ALL the reasons right now)), so she has followed my advice and is a happy person. The point of this post? Vista, in my opinion anyway, is rather like Windows ME of the past - a bit of an abortion from Microsoft - they have quite obviously released Vista FAR too early - it's an unfinished product, rushed out of the factory, because it perceived its competitor's products (Linux-based, OSX-based for example) being released with certain innovations which it wanted to claim for itself as its own innovations, and now because of that is paying the price of that rush. People percieve Vista to be what it is - a rushed out Operating System with many bugs, failed claims, and as a - to be extremely kind - beta quality product at the very most.

Re:A couple reasons for this

[FractalZone]

Big companies are not known for leaping forward into new and unproven technologies, especially when most of the improvement is just user eye-candy.

Exactly. XP was a disaster when it was first released, but like most Microsoft products, it benefitted from being beaten up by users for several years. I know of savvy computer users who still run Win2K, not because of corporate lethargy, but because it is arguably faster and more stable than XP, and has a smaller footprint, even after all the multitudinous Service Packs and other patches have been applied. Honestly, I don't do anything that depends on XP that I couldn't do with Win2K, and think downgrading to Vista would be a major step in the wrong direction. Microsoft OSes need to "age" at least three or four years before they can be trusted in the real world.

I still say that Windows Vista is the best advertisement around for Ubuntu Linux.

Re:A couple reasons for this

[GLowder]

Or, you do like my wife and I did, we've changed over to Mac OS X. We still have a few commercial apps that are currently "windows only". I bought each of us a new XP license in order to install them on Parallels. XP is ok for the time being for a few apps, but I'm just not happy letting Vista in the house.

Re:A couple reasons for this

[westlake]

Secondly, you have people buying computers with Vista, deciding they don't like it, and buying a license of XP instead I'll admit that this is pure speculation

All Microsoft is saying is that XP sales in FY08 will probably be up a little and Vista sales down a little from earlier projections.

Systems entering the consumer market this fall will be "designed for Vista."

They will perform well running Vista and will ship with DX 10 video as standard, perhaps with integrated ReadyBooost flash, hybrid hard drives, etc., as standard. They will be running second or third generation Vista drivers.

Vista Premium has the media-center features that appeal in the home market, Ultimate the security features you want in a high-end laptop.

How many of these buyers are likely to drift back to XP - and can you really believe that the numbers will be statistically significant?

Re:A couple reasons for this

[Petaris]

Secondly, you have people buying computers with Vista, deciding they don't like it, and buying a license of XP instead.

If you have a MS lic for an OS or Office suite you can install either of the two versions before it, you can contact MS for the nessesary lic code. Our new machines will come with Vista Business lics with WinXP Pro installed, and we could have even asked for Win2k installed. I am not disagreeing with you at all, just pointing out a perhaps not so well known MS lic feature. That way you can always install Vista if/when you decide you are ready for it.

Re:A couple reasons for this

[LehiNephi]

Keep in mind, however, that the 4:1 ratio is a number released by Microsoft. Considering the amount of effort and money they are expending to promote Vista, I find even this number hard to believe. Remember the vouchers Microsoft gave out at the end of last year? The ones they gave out before Christmas because Vista wouldn't be released by then? They counted every one of those as a sale of Vista, despite the fact that very few of those vouchers have been or will be redeemed. They also count every machine shipped with Vista today, regardless of its eventual fate. That means that all the computers sold to big companies (that receive these computers and immediately image them to XP or 2000 or Linux) count as sales of Vista.

Look at it this way: even after spending millions and millions of dollars on marketing, and then ...ah... "massaging" the statistics, the best they could come up with was still less than what they expected.

Vista sales

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, 78% of sales? That's pretty impressive, considering how many people are actually using Vista.

Re:Vista sales

[lukisi]

W3counter stats are based on some 5031 websites.
Impressive indeed!

The Cynic in me...

[NeoTron]

The Ironic Cynic in me says Microsoft released Vista /EXACTLY/ to increase it's sales of XP :P

Vista is a failure

[realdodgeman]

Vista is a failure. It always has been, and it still is. Microsoft try to tell you otherwise, but that doesn't make it any less of a failure.

I hope and think that people are starting to realize that newer is not always better, and at the same time realizing that Microsoft doesn't always tell the truth. I also hope and think that this will speed up the adoption of Linux for the desktop, even if it is not quite ready for everybody yet.

(Excuse my English, I am Norwegian.)

Re:Vista is a failure

[MichaelSmith]

I hope and think that people are starting to realize that newer is not always better, and at the same time realizing that Microsoft doesn't always tell the truth. I also hope and think that this will speed up the adoption of Linux for the desktop, even if it is not quite ready for everybody yet.

I am a Linux user at my workplace but the Windows systems we have all run XP. Our IT people will buy Vista when they can use it across the entire site. Until then they will deploy new systems with the old OS.

Excuse my English, I am Norwegian.

There is nothing wrong with your English.

tempting...

[jadin]

I'd vote with my money and buy XP, but then I'd be, you know, voting with my money and buying XP!

Re:tempting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently many people voted with their money and bought a mac.

Dear Microsoft...

[skinfitz]

Dear Microsoft - you lost me as a customer about 15 seconds into the 'Monkey Boy' video, the day of which I immediately went out and bought a Mac. (serious). My exact thought process was 'I seriously see no future in a company that has a f**king a**hole as a CEO.'

Now how to 'fix' your Vista 'issue' - cut the multiple versions bullsh*t and make 'Ultimate' the only version, and sell it for $120.

Be amazed as profits rocket.

That is all.

Dumbasses.

ps on second thoughts ignore all this and carry on as normal as it's really helping Linux and OSX gain ground.

Vista Sucks...

[CFBMoo1]

I'm sorry, some people will flat out disagree but it sucks. Reasons I think it sucks and I'm going out and getting a copy of XP before they totally yank it is as follows:

* 0x80073712 error in doing updates. I've ran in to this problem and did the registry fix to remove StoreDirty, cleaned out the update download directory, and threw up a voodoo doll on the machine to get Windows Updates to install. From what I've read on their forums and other sites I got as results from my Googling, repair install or reinstall is about the only fix.

* Video drivers, I'm still waiting on a 7900gtx nvidia driver that works properly. I'm not at all happy with Vista's performance and driver compatabilities. I spent over $300 on that card FOR VISTA. Why the hell ain't it working properly on my games which aren't even DX10 games. This is more of an Nvidia problem but it just adds another reason for me to not like Vista.

* Renaming everything. Jesus christ I can't find Add/Remove Programs because it was changed to something else. Consistancy for god sake people! I seriously feel like I did after I first installed a copy of Linux, which runs great, but I had this lost feeling and no clue where anything was.

XP may have had more holes in it but it just WORKED. I can't say the same for Vista at all.

Re:Vista Sucks...

[Conor Turton]

XP may have had more holes in it but it just WORKED. I can't say the same for Vista at all. Oh how short a memory you have. For a start SLOW NETWORK SHARES BROWSING which is still a major issue on XP. XP when it first came out had a whole slew of issues and SP1 did a massive job of clearing them up. In fact, it can only really be argued that XP fully matured with SP2. Drivers were less of a problem because XP was based on Win2k, so you could always try Win2k drivers, but for those of us who've been around a while, we can remember the problems with Win2k driver model caused in the early stages.

The same is happening with Vista. Remember that like Win2k, Vista uses a different driver model from what came before. Drivers will improve, service packs will address the issues. 3 years from now, you'll have forgotten about the problems existing.

Vista is a big change

[LaughingCoder]

XP sales will thrive until businesses switch over, which will take some time. And the more saavy businesses will wait for service pack one before switching. This is not surprising - we saw a similar phenomena back when XP came out. Here is an article from as recent as 2005 talking about the slow switchover from 98/2000 to XP http://www.betanews.com/article/Windows_XP_Adoptio n_Rates_Slow/1118943913

I am in the process of learning Vista right now. My first impressions are that there are some things to like (lots of problem diagnosis tools, configuration history tracking, network mapping, etc) and some things that make you scratch your head (I have yet to figure out how to coerce Vista to allow my backup service to start each time I boot - I always have to "give permission". I know I can turn off User Access Control entirely, but that seems a bit draconian and not really "in the spirit" of Vista).

Re:Oy

[Deviate_X]

No is isn't people are just too stupid to read properly, the article is about microsoft changing their predictions about XP sales for next year from 15% up to 22% and vista from 85% down to 78%.

Its amazing how people can get facts so wrong when its practically written in your face

Re:Microsoft Says

[cheater512]

Um...XP sales increasing AFTER Vista is released either means that the sale of computers has jumped exponentially or people dont want Vista.

If people dont want Vista then I cant see their sales being very high.

Profit!!

[the_masked_mallard]

1. Release crappy OS
2. Sell old OS
3. Profit!!

The ?? has been explained!!

A couple of reasons for this

[Opportunist]

First, companies became aware that a finished MS product has at least a SP2 attached to it. Not trolling here, but look back and think for a moment. Which MS OS was really considerably reliable to produce no undesired effects before it was an SP2 version?

Then there's that driver issue. For much legacy hardware, you'll not get certified Vista drivers, or drivers that won't work 100% reliably under Vista. Even for current hardware, you sometimes still have troubles integrating it seamlessly. Not really the fault of MS, just a matter of a lot of very different hardware in existance with manufacturers who're slow to adopt to a market that isn't as large as it was predicted to be.

Then there's TCP/DRM. A lot of people are actually insecure of just how it works, a lot of spin has been delivered and a lot of scare has been dealt. Some of it was justified, but I've heard so much nonsensical BS that I can see why some people think their beloved copied movies will cease to work if they use Vista.

Then there's the licensing model of "phoning home" at least once every 6 months or it stops working. Not to mention the monthly revelation of just what Vista keeps stored and transmits to MS.

And finally that a lot of the new features in Vista are not really a seller. Yes, they're nice to have and offer some value, but nothing new that cannot be achived by third party tools. Many people who want these features will rather try to get a tool for free instead of switching to a new OS.

Bottom line: People prefer to use what they know. Especially when they've learned by now that an MS system takes about 1-2 years after release to be "finished". People don't want to be paying Betatesters anymore. And neither do companies.

We linux users should help promote Vista because..

[3seas]

...vista sucking will result in promotion for Linux.

Only don't promote Vista as a Linux user, Instead promote it like you work for MS.

Lets all face it, new and improved functionality must be weighed against new and improved problems and user constraints to have to again learn all about and deal with.

Who really wants to do that?

I was resistant to XP when it came out and I have never purchased a copy but use it at work and find it installed on systems people toss and I grab up or systems others give me. Do I like XP better than windows 98? Yes, some, as it has improvements that I could do without but are nicer than windows 98. But it also has irritations I'd rather not have that windows 98 doesn't have.

And that just a comparison of windows to windows. I use Linux 90%, or better, of the time at home. I have used Knoppix, still have it installed on one system but use ubuntu on my main system. (having drive trays is useful as I can swap out for windows98 as I have purchased several third party software packages and installed them on windows 98).

Of the windows XP boxes, I use one briefly for bellsouth/AT&T and linksys router control, because they only support windows (idiots). But I can and do run the live cd of linux dynebolic on them.

I have numerious systems including several PPC macs pre-osx and one imac post osx (interesting machine).
I have systems that have MS DOS - pre-windows and later versions and onece had to deal with MS ME trash.
Somewhere I have a MFM drive dual bootable (probably doesn't spin anymore) with old Minix on it.

I still have an Amiga 1000 and an Amiga 4000/toaster system.

The point is: I've tried a lot of different system, more than mentioned.

But what do I really want of an OS?

Of course I want a wide range of quality software I'm interested in, to run on it, thats a given.

The Amiga is the closest, and I'd probably like BeOS too.

But the problem here is that they are no longer reasonably supported and off shoots like AROS and BeOS's open source versions are yet to reach production level.

DragonFly BSD seems promising as does the Hurd and Minix 3, but they too lack in current state.

Overall I am greatly disappointed with the computer industry in regards to Operating Systems.

All things weighed, GNU/Linux currently gets the most points, But I don't consider it 100% Free Software, as there really are a lot of built in constraints.

100% FreeSoftware will only happen when software is easy enough to create that most anyone can do it, just as today most anyone can use a calculator.

Windows is very much the opposite of free, and the most pathetic example of MS dumbing down the users (a crime against consumers) is changing the names of applications and functionality and in general taking away functionality that should be considered fundamental. Philosophy being - make the users think they are stupid while giving teh professionals more to re-learn and charge for.

While GNU/Linux applies has it constraints one what the users can do for themselves.

So promote Vista ..... Remember you are an IT professional and must support your income. When the users see past windows you still can have a go at them via Linux.

And remember, when this barbaric OS mentality is finally overcome, it won't matter to you cause you long be dead.

Nothing New Here

[Prototerm]

I'm a consultant and get to talk with IT folks in various organizations. When I ask their opinion of Vista, it's like they just sucked on a lemon. XP is bad enough -- a lot of their computers are still running 2000 -- but Vista is not an option. There are two reasons: hardware drivers that they've heard are either buggy or unavailable for existing equipment, and the inability of existing computers to run it. Not to mention the high cost of new computers capable of running it. Everyone has gotten used to being able to buy cheap, name-brand machines for the organization. Then there's the concern about mixing Vista with XP in the organization. Supporting the users on Vista is no slam-dunk.

It will take a while for these organizations to start buying into the whole Vista thing, and will only happen once the older computers and peripherals are retired. Until then, and only then, XP will remain the preferred operating system over Vista. This shouldn't be earth-shaking news, since a lot of old companies are still using older versions of windows (I wouldn't be surprised if there are still a few Windows 98 and NT4 installations out there), and are only now considering a migration to XP. Microsoft justs needs to have a little patience. Vista will start gaining traction with these organizations in 2009.

Vista's Content Protection

[Ilmarin77]

* Video drivers, I'm still waiting on a 7900gtx nvidia driver that works properly. I'm not at all happy with Vista's performance and driver compatabilities. I spent over $300 on that card FOR VISTA. Why the hell ain't it working properly on my games which aren't even DX10 games. This is more of an Nvidia problem but it just adds another reason for me to not like Vista.

Here is the explanation, why it takes so long: Vista's Content Protection: In short, apparently it is very difficult to make a proper video driver for Vista.

Re:Yup

[Winckle]

Here is a diagram to explain this situation. -=Joke=- 0 /|\ You As you can see, the joke is passing rapidly over your head.

Re:So basically

[Jerry]

"All the real people you know"? How many is that? One, two?

No, VISTA is NOT a "casualty" of bad reviews, because most pre-release and just released reviews had been good. They've been good because they were bought off. How quickly you seem to have forgotten, for example, the free laptop fiasco which saw several journalists and bloggers receiving free Ferreira laptops in exchange for writing good reviews about VISTA. One has to wonder what "gifts" Microsoft sycophants like Rob Enderle and Laura Didio got for their continual gushing over VISTA, save for an occasional "faint praise" article, and to spread FUD about Mac and Linux?

The REAL reasons why VISTA is doing so poorly is because of word of mouth/keyboard by actual Windows users who have real world experiences to relate in talkbacks and independent blogs. For example: A "real people" and long time Windows fanboi, owner of a popular Windows blog site, and beta tester of VISTA, decided to compare it with Mac by forcing himself to run Mac for one month. After one month he surprised his readership by announcing that he decided to abandon VISTA and Windows, and make the Mac OS X his OS!

Another example: Our IT department got a DELL laptop with Enterprise VISTA installed in order to test it to see if they wanted to begin rolling it out to our 400+ workstations. The laptop was DELL 620 dual core with 2GB of RAM and an 80 GB HD. In the first three months several of the IT guys played with it a couple hours a day. Even with that low usage rate VISTA crashed so often and so bad that they had to reinstall it THREE TIMES. The video would randomly go in and out of HiRes, if they could get it into HiRes at all. Sometimes the DVD would work but mostly it wouldn't. DRM was butting in all the time, refusing to play legal media files , etc. It had even locked up on the first boot up following one fresh reinstall. They decided to use their XP volume license and replace VISTA with XP on all new DELL computers coming into the department. In my experience it was a wise choice. And now, this posting is but one of many more that continually flood talkbacks on various forums on a daily basis.

Despite the flood of bad news from REAL users, George Ou and Ed Bott and some of their colleagues at ZDNet, continue to report glowing experiences, sans problems, with VISTA. If that says anything, it says you have to be a computer expert to setup and run VISTA without experiencing problems. But, they might not be reporting the whole truth. It reminds me of the "uptime wars" several years ago when users of Win95/98 were claiming uptimes of 1 or 2 years in order to match uptimes claimed by users running Linux servers. (I had a SUSE server in my office run 630 days before it was shut down.) The wars came to a sudden end when Microsoft announced the 49.7 day clock bug. That bug hung any Win95/98 box which managed to reach that uptime, forcing a reboot. The fact that the Win95/98 fanboies reported uptimes far in excess of 49.7 days meant that they were lying about experiencing uptimes in excess of 49.7 days. If they had a Win95/98 box reach 49.7 days they learned about the bug or may have known of the bug but lied anyway because of their Windows zealotry.

Will VISTA eventually succeed? Probably. Money talks, and it talks best in a corrupt society, especially one as corrupt as our is. Microsoft has $60 Billion to spend to make VISTA "good enough", to continue the PR barrage and anti-Linux/Mac FUD campaign, to continue buying off politicians to get additional laws passed favorable to their proprietary products, ballot-stuffing Standards committee votes, if they can't just buy their proprietary format into being a "Standard", and reigning in DELL and other OEM slaves who wondered off the Microsoft plantation.

Meanwhile, in other news ...

[PPH]

... Ford announces continued strong sales of the Edsel.

Requisite bad car analogy: The incorporation of numerous 'advances' in automotive technology have fueled a healthy market for older models.

Re:Yup

[Leebert]

Sadly, it looks more like the joke decapitated him. :(

Re:Upgrade Train is Out of Steam.

[dedazo]

You know you're pretty much down to scraping the bottom of that barrel when you find that those stupid images actually make a point of some sort... and then you actually use them to prop up your "M$ is dying" dribble.

I mean, those aren't even well done, never mind funny or even worth looking at. Do you hang out at 4chan? What am I saying, at least the /b/ doodles tend to be well done and actually funny. "Pathetically stupid" is a good way to describe these.

soon they will be missing Wall Street's, then it's all over for them

1999 called, he wants his doom predictions back. "XP is not selling, everyone is sticking with 2000, Microsoft will go bankrupt soon" and so on and so forth.

It had better be "record breaking"

[twitter]

microsoft has just posted record breaking profits and sales revenue beating the analysts in the both the last two quarters

In an inflationary economy, anything less than "record breaking" is a decline. Declines are just fine for most businesses, but M$ pays a large share of their salary in terms of stock options and depends on perpetual growth to keep going.

how the register managed to spin that against vista would be amazing if it wasn't so transparent.

If it's transparent, tell me what's wrong with it. The fact is that Vista's release made no difference to M$'s bottom line, despite it's cost. At the very least, M$ has a return on investment problem because their OS no longer pays for it's creation. At the very worst, the lack of growth makes M$'s loss of power evident. They can't make money off the upgrade treadmill anymore and are out of room for growth.