Vista Shipped On 39% of PCs In 2007

Stony Stevenson writes "Vista is proving far less popular than XP did with new PC buyers during the earlier OS's first year on the market. This conclusion follows from statements by Bill Gates at this week's Consumer Electronics Show. Gates boasted that Microsoft has sold more than 100 million copies of Windows Vista since the OS launched last January. Based on Gates's statement, Windows Vista was aboard just 39% of the PC's that shipped in 2007. And Vista, in terms of units shipped, only outperformed first-year sales of XP by 10%, according to Gates's numbers, while PC shipments have doubled in the years since XP's release."

Comments

How many are actually running XP?

[TheLink]

I believe lots of companies get to use an older version instead of Vista even though they have a Vista license.

Microsoft gets to count it as a Vista sale (and brag), and Big Corp gets to use Win2K/XP.

Same goes for MS Office 2007.

Re:How many are actually running XP?

[forkazoo]

You have to wonder how many of the people that did get Vista on their laptop/desktop remove Vista and install XP? I work for a major electronics retailer and we always have people that buy Vista machines and have us install windows xp on them for a fee. Sort of related but we get an ungodly high amount of computer returns with the reason being Vista sucks.

Honestly, I would expect that in the retail channel, the vast majority of PC's sold with Vista are running Vista. In a corporate environment, a lot of IT departments are probably not bothering with Vista while others beta test it, and won't have any interest in investigating deploying it until SP1 is well understood. On the common home user front, however, people use whatever their machine came with. most of them don't know what the difference is between Office and Windows. Hell, some of them have trouble grasping the difference between "MSN Windows" and "AOL Instant Messenger." Yes, really.

Vista may drive some people to insist that their new machine be made to "work like the old one." But the vast majority of the consumer base just isn't well educated enough in the subject to be able to make a choice between XP and Vista. They are still using Windows 98, and just want to replace the old busted one as conveniently as possible.

It seems that all the statistics and reports about how Vista is doing well, or Vista is doing badly seem to ignore the fact that when it comes to consumer sales, the average buyer is simply incapable of being "excited about the new hotness" or of "rejecting the new beast." Whenever you read these sorts of information tidbits, just assume that about a third of all computers are sold to iguanas.

Re:I'm surprised that number isn't higher.

[ivan256]

Most machines are sold to businesses. They've had the option to get XP instead all along.

Do consumers have a choice?

[multipass666]

No kidding, try get a laptop these days without Vista already installed. The Dell XPS is a good example. Like buying a new car, its a mandatory extra. Want to boot linux? Still have to buy Vista anyway, yay!

There is no potential upsell opportunity

[igb]

potential upsell opportunity

Retail end users don't upgrade operating systems, ever. This may not be 100% true, but it's certainly 95% true. When consumers buy a new PC in order eradicate spyware, what makes you think OS upgrades are on the agenda (even if they actually work with the hardware present, which is a whole other story). Businesses might, but OEM pricing of licensing is so low relative to Select/Enterprise that usually it makes no economic sense. So I believe a seat sold with XP is a seat lost to Vista for 2-4 years.

ian

XP solved problems, Vista creates them.

[Jane Q. Public]

Most computers running Win98SE would also run XP, if maybe a bit slow. Vista requires a major hardware upgrade for most people to run acceptably or at all. For example, I was developing on an XP machine, and it performed acceptably if not exactly snappy. But it won't run Vista... at all. So what do you get for that major hardware upgrade? Better performance? Nope. Vista often runs more sluggishly on the new machines than XP did on the old. Graphics? Well, maybe a little. But OS X and Linux are adding that, too, without all the extra overhead. Freedom? Not on your life! One of the major performance-robbing "features" is that DRM has been "built in" at a very fundamental and low level. So everything you do on the machine, you are being checked every which way to make sure you are not doing something "wrong"! Why would anybody spend that much money for something that hardly benefits them at all, but benefits "the industry" a lot? When you can figure that out, then mayby you can sell Vista to them.

Vista and XP

[sqrt(2)]

The thing that no one, here especially, wants to admit is that the problems with Vista are going to start disappearing real soon. Disappearing in the way the problems with XP have disappeared...you're still using Windows after all.

When you buy a new computer with Vista it's going to be so powerful that the bloat that's been added since XP (and this isn't a Microsoft problem, OSX and Ubuntu all have gotten bigger) wont be noticed, or even noticeable. You could make the argument that there's no reason a home user needs a dual core processor and two gigs of RAM but that's what is being sold. If the upcoming service pack does most of what MS claims it can do the differences between XP and Vista will be even further reduced. Hardware and software compatibility is a big problem, but it's one that MS has dealt with before. XP had the same issues. Eventually software got updated or replaced and it isn't a problem. It's the same cycle as last time. Machines get faster and software gets updated. The new MS OS goes through some growing pains but eventually becomes accepted. XP was too slow, no compelling reasons to upgrade, 2000 was good enough and faster. Now the lines are: Vista is too slow, there's no reasons to upgrade, XP is good enough.

If you remember back when XP was released it did suck compared to 2000. 2000 was the mature product. You want a fair comparison you'll need compare Vista now to XP 1 year after release. Or compare XP SP2 to Vista SP2, but since we can't look into the future we'll have to settle for the first option.

Re:Vista hasn't been out for a full year yet

[vux984]

To be honest, I am surprised that Vista has sold as much as it has, considering that the upgrade from Windows 9x to XP was a much bigger step than from XP to Vista.

9x to XP was a bigger step, but XP was a 0.1 upgrade from w2k, which meant that even when XP was "new" it was already a few years old in a lot of key respects. Most drivers for 2k worked with XP and were already mature, for example. The networking stack was essentially 2k, and it fit into w2k networks exactly the same...pro even came with the CALs 2k pro did... etc, etc... so there was a lot less resistance.

It was essentially already a "mature established product" even when it was new.

Re:What about Win Xp...

[joto]

I doubt it. Joe Bloggs is in my opinion one of these people

1. Doesn't know anything. Doesn't care. Buys whatever the salesman wants to sell him, assuming the price-range is right.
2. Doesn't know anything. Doesn't care. Buys the one with a colour she likes (which suprisingly often is a pretty good strategy ;-)
3. Doesn't know anything. Asks his fourteen year old cousin. Ends up with a monster PC for gaming that is just as outdated in three years as the cheap one the salesman wanted to sell him

I doubt any of them will reflect much upon the choice of Vista or XP (or mac or linux). Given that the average PC-buyer doesn't know the difference between Gigabytes and Megahertz, they are not going to reflect much upon number of copies of this or that. Vista is newer, and therefore better. Those who complain about Vista are PC enthusiasts or corporate buyers.

Besides, selling Joe Bloggs anything but Windows is a recipe for disaster. What's he going to do when it will not work with his GPS, camera, cellphone, PDA, mp3-player, or other favourite gadget? Linux is good, but I still need access to windows once in a while.

Nothing for the OSS crowd to cheer about.

[shikra]

39% is plenty. As OSes mature, improvements are gonna be evolutionary at best. To be able to achieve a 39% adoption rate over a relatively stable OS (XP) is pretty good. No, in fact, it's a very good result considering the bad press MS has been getting lately. I for one wouldn't consider 39% to be a failure given the quality of the product.

Extrapolating the figures given in the summary, we can assume XP has a take-up rate of 60~70%ish within the same period of introduction. That's when most computers were still running on crappy 98 mind you -- hence accounting for the greater adoption rate due to the significant upgrade.

So no, saying it is far less popular is a stretch. 19% would be far less, not 39%.

Re:Vista hasn't been out for a full year yet

[MojoStan]

The sales figures quoted are not comparable. The XP figure quoted was for 14 months while the Vista sales period was less than 12 months. The launch date of XP was October 25, while Vista was launched January 30 - yet both speeches were made on January 8. That's three months of sales that XP had over Vista. What you say seemed so obvious (those dates are mentioned in the article and its links) that I re-read the article to see if I was missing something. I did: that 255.7 million of total 2007 PC shipments is based on an estimate from March 20. So the "Vista Shipped on 39% of PCs" estimate is calculated by assuming the floor ("more than 100 million copies") of 11¼ months of Vista sales, then dividing that by a nine-month-old estimate of the last 12 months of PC shipments. However, that's not nearly as bad as how he calculated "Windows XP captured about 67% of the new PC market during its first year."

I have to conclude that the article's author, Paul McDougall, must be a moron and/or a troll. McDougall's math:

• Vista shipped on 39% of PCs in 2007: (floor of Bill Gates's "more than 100 million copies" boast for 11¼ months) divided by (nine-month-old estimate of the last 12 months of PC shipments)
• XP shipped on 67% of PCs in 2002: (14 months of XP sales) divided by (12 months of PC shipments)

I think it's obvious that Vista sales percentages are well below initial XP sales percentages, but we don't need dishonest math to exaggerate this point.

XP sucks due to third party installations - wha?

[Animaether]

"Then, after all was finally said and done, using the thing was an amazingly frustrating experience, with seemingly endless offers/popups, some masquerading as os-level services, some more obvious overtures to purchase 3rd party software"

I'm sorry - but you are, then, saying that XP sucks because of (as far as I can tell) third party stuff?

Windows XP, without any fancy OEM stuff tacked on, doesn't nag you with seemingly endless offers - the only popups you'll get are the to some annoying 'help bubbles', which others find helpful, and you can turn off either way - the rest of your comment seems to entirely point to third party elements.

That's like saying OS X sucks because after you bought QuickTime 6 Pro and upgraded to OS X Tiger (which has QuickTime 7), QuickTime will once again nag you to upgrade to Pro every first time you run it - and while it's running, taunt you with greyed-out options that were once available to you but are no longer so... until you purchase the Pro upgrade -again-.
( For the curious - back up QuickTime 6, install Tiger, restore. Old stuff, but gosh - if we can blame third party solutions for XP 'sucking' then we can certainly blame same-party solutions for OS X 'sucking', no? )

Windows, in general, has plenty of attack vectors available to you to point out how crappy it is; there's really no need to drag third party stuff into the discussion.

Re:What about Win Xp...

[Gr8Apes]

Besides, selling Joe Bloggs anything but Windows is a recipe for disaster. What's he going to do when it will not work with his GPS, camera, cellphone, PDA, mp3-player, or other favourite gadget? Linux is good, but I still need access to windows once in a while.

It's extremely obvious you've not run Vista. You'll have better luck in supporting those gadgets with OSX or Linux, although the generally supported OS is still, of course, XP.

As for your comment about corporate buyers and PC enthusiasts, you underestimate their effect. Corporate is where the bulk of MS's revenue comes from. And PC enthusiasts affect much more than their own purchases, as they're generally the "support tech" for their entire extended family and thus will be the ones asked whether someone should buy this "new fangled Vista computer". (The answer will be "no")

Re:Joe Bloggs will buy XP...

[AvitarX]

I think it has more to do with someone in the family or friends or removed by a degree or 2 buying a Vista certified computer without enough RAM.

Even those forum posts probably relate to that. Vista needs more RAM than the low end systems it is sold on. Especially Laptops. Just like XP was sold with 256MB and had problems, 98 with 16MB(32?) and 95 with 8MB. The new Widows was being sold on last gen hardware and everyone lost (well not the stores that get to sell high-markup RAM).

XP needs 1GB to run background (non-spyware) crap + Office, and Vista needs more. Systems are not being sold with enough and people are complaining. Since all their specs went up and it is slower they see Vista as the problem.