By Ina Fried, 30 October 2007 13:05
NEWS
Despite doubts about how quickly consumers and businesses are taking up the latest Windows OS, Microsoft remains upbeat about Vista adoption.
In last week's profits announcement, Microsoft reported a 25 per cent increase in revenue from the unit that sells Windows for laptop and desktop PCs. Some of that increase comes from a crackdown on piracy and because more people are opting for premium versions of Vista. But the company has now managed to sell 88 million copies of the operating system.
On the business side, uptake has been slower. Microsoft finally acknowledged it won't hit its goal of having Vista in use on twice as many business PCs as were running XP in its first 12 months on the market.
Neil Charney, general manager of Microsoft's Windows Client unit, said: "We think the adoption is pretty much at the rate commensurate with past releases." He added that the original goal represented an "enthusiastic assessment" of where Microsoft might be able to get. Analysts at the time said Microsoft's prediction was overly ambitious.
However the software behemoth said it is seeing some positive signs on the business front, notably a rise in the number of businesses signing long-term deals that cover Windows.
Mike Nash, vice president of Windows product management, said: "They wouldn't be signing these agreements if they didn't have the intent to [deploy Vista]."
Al Gillen, IDC analyst, said while corporations may be planning their Vista move, most large companies buying PCs are still immediately reinstalling Windows XP.
Gillen said, businesses are "certainly not rushing into it more quickly than they have other Windows' [releases]".
He said, historically, large companies tend to drag their feet on deploying new operating systems, preferring to wait until bugs and compatibility issues are ironed out. A catalyst for some businesses could be the first service pack update of Vista, due early next year.
Even some consumers and small businesses have been opting to downgrade. Dell and other PC makers brought back XP on consumer and small-business machines earlier this year, while more recently some PC makers have made it easier for those buying Vista machines to return to XP.
But Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, said while there may be a few PCs still on the market that have XP, it's Vista consumers are buying.
Ballmer said: "Yes, there's one or two models you can find someplace in the world of PCs that don't run Windows Vista but the machines that sell all run Windows Vista."
Microsoft said to expect strong marketing from key partners such as HP in the run up to Christmas. Microsoft has also started an online marketing campaign touting the benefits of combining Vista with Microsoft's Windows Live services - the most significant melding of the operating system and online businesses to date.
Ina Fried writes for CNET News.com
Comments
There are 17 comments. Join the discussion
1. Anthony Hunt
It's UPGRADE to XP and DOWNGRADE to Vista! Get it right!
After using Vista Ultimate for four months, I got fed up with the slow and unstable OS, plus the dusty scanner and webcam staring accusingly at me, unused because of no driver support.
Even the 8800 card (DX10) runs faster in XP.
Vista just doesn't offer anything positive.
2. Karen Challinor
we could have a quick straw poll among users to see which one they actually prefer
3. anonymous
Of the 9 new PC's I've dealt with in the past few months, I've been asked to remove Vista from 8 of them. Vista came along more Ram hungry, more CPU hungry, and more disk hungry but doesn't really offer enough to justify it over XP for the average computer user.
Microsoft can give all the spin they want on sales number but truth is if it wan't being forced on people via new PC purchases their figures wouldn't be very good. It's about time they spent some of that massive cash reserve on optimising the OS.
4. anonymous
Maybe, but these numbers are easy to spin. We have recently bought four machines that are Vista compatible. All came with Vista (I had no choice), ALL have been "downgraded" to XP.
I bet all four count in Microsoft's books as Vista sales.
5. Roger Huffadine
Someone is listening to different jungle drums to me. Everyone I know who has Vista on their PC has had either a bad experience or is asking how to re-install XP.
I'm amazed that an operating system that took so long to write and test shows zero incremental value.
6. Graham Coles
Do they? Sounds like the same old 'there have been x million new machines sold, so we've sold x million copies of Vista.
Microsoft just don't seem to get the difference between people wanting an operating system and simply getting it bundled with a system and no option to change it.
I wonder how many they would have sold if all new systems were sold with XP OR Vista and people had a choice.
The only real signs of people wanting Vista should surely come from the supposed billions of existing XP users who can't wait to buy their new operating system. Of course, if you only counted sales of the OS itself, and not the hardware, I doubt you'd have the kind of headline making figures you wanted.
"Microsoft are please to announce that many thousands of people have upgraded to the new breathtaking operating system that took them seven years to deliver ..."
7. anonymous
I have to say that I am unconvinced by this. The reason that Vista is showing as being popular is because it is extremely difficult to get a PC with any other operating system
My wife has just purchased a new laptop with Vista installed; it's proved a nightmare to get going on our home network due to the security restrictions built in to the OS, and the various frills, bell, whistles etc don't do much for the real functionality.
8. Dave Roberts
From what I've seen it's not that consumers WANT vista, rather that they cannot get a new PC without it.
9. tim James
As a regular user of both Vista and XP, I can only say the sooner Vista goes into a corner and dies the better the OS market will be for users. The figures quoted by Microsoft seem to be based on the fact that the only sources of XP are pirates or old licences on OEM machines.
There are so many incompatibilities with Vista, which seem only to be there to ensure that Microsoft sells more of its own products. I want to use other apps which do what I want, how I want.
10. Nick Cole
Why do people 'want' Vista? What does it do that is so essential that cannot be done by XP, 2000 or anything else for that matter?
88 million copies across the world - wow!
Given that it needs so much memory to operate in what is the real gain, after you have upgraded your hardware merely to get back to where you were before.
11. Richard A
I could not believe how slow Vista proved to be when tested (pre-installed) on a new Intel core duo Sony Vaio laptop. Really, I was shocked.
Why anybody would willingly trade a stable and established XP environment for the wading though treacle experience of driverless Vista is quite utterly beyond me.
Granted, it has borrowed a few nice flourishes from the Apple Mac user interface but it really has little else to recommend it above XP.
Apart from security, of course.
And (at the risk of re-opening the wrong debate) if it is security you are after and you are buying new hardware anyway, why not get the real deal (GUI-wise) and move to Mac OS X? The learning curve ain't so steep, the drivers are mostly built in and it is rippingly fast even on 2 or 3 year old machines.
Oh and you can still install your old XP licences alongside it for those rare enterprise solutiuons that only run under a Windows environment!
Hasta la vista, Vista.
12. Roger Huffadine
Me again - So Silicon - Given all of the comments so far - Any chance of you being able to run a Poll to find out the REAL numbers who WANT Vista?
13. John Sniadowski
Well I say the MS figures are incorrect, its 88 million -1. I bought a notebook last week a 2GHz dual processor jobbie. It came pre-loaded with Vista Business Edition. After waiting 5 minutes for it to properly boot up I stuck with it for several days and then gave in.
The system was really slow, so I shoved Linux Centos on it and it flies as you would reasonably expect for a machine of that spec with 3GB memory. How can a company produce a OS that just soaks up vast amounts of processor power to give back so little in return. Its nothing but a load of marketing puff, but poor old Joe Soap public is going to be spoon fed this stuff and ripped off.
I am still bewildered how on how slow the darned machine was using Vista AND it has the Windows Vista sticker on it.
I wonder how many other people are resorting to ripping out the pre-installed version of Vista wich of course won't show up in the MS stats.
MS I want my money back and I aint saying please!!!
14. anonymous
purchasing it of your own free will would be like paying $200 for someone to punch you in the head, who wants to be punched in the head?
15. Richard A
Anonymous IT Student: "purchasing it of your own free will would be like paying $200 for someone to punch you in the head, who wants to be punched in the head?"
Bill Gates?
Steve Ballmer?
I'd pay $200 for the priveledge if it meant the withdrawal of Vista.
Actually, remove the caveat from that last sentence.
16. Neil Thatcher
I've not used Vista but I certainly don't want it.
No one has shown me any compelling feature to warrant the extra hardware resources which it demands and I've heard too many bad reports against it.
A network support company I've recently dealt with told me that they've tried to make to switch to Vista twice but both times back-tracked due to too many unsupported applications and lack of drivers.
The changes to Vista over XP are simply gloss and change for changes sake which translate as nothing more than annoyances.
In the time that Vista has been available I've had to purchase around half a dozen PCs for my company and I've only looked at and purchased XP machines.
17. Rob Taylor
Vista - Very Glossy - but not user friendly and incredibly buggy, evey PC / Laptop we purchase now comes with Vista and is instantly downgraded to XP, so how many of the 88 million copies of Vista sold to date are actually in use? Not many I would guess. Having read about the fixes in the service packs due for release next year - I don't think MS have done enough. I may be tempted to try Vista again possible after SP2 arrives...but I suppose by then there will be a new OS on the horizon...