Vista Sales Way Down or Are They

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Vista Sales Way Down, Or Are They?

By: Dan Morrill
2007-09-12

In not surprising news, the actual numbers on Vista Sales are being released, and CNet got the scoop on the whole thing.

One of the interesting things about numbers when comparing anything is that numbers can be influenced by many factors, which is good to know especially when talking vista.

Microsoft likes to talk about licenses sold, and there are a lot of them, some 80 million licenses sold, but that number does not break down those covered by software assurance, site licensed software, PC OEM loads, or a host of other things that influence that number.

The numbers reported by CNet are for box sold in store only, that are down some 59 percent. As CNet states:

Standalone unit sales of Vista at U.S. retail stores were down 59.7 percent compared with Windows XP, during each product's first six months on store shelves, according to NPD Group. In terms of revenue, sales are also down, but the drop has been less steep, at 41.5 percent. The findings largely mirror the sales pattern NPD saw for Vista during its first week on the market in January. Source: CNET

Those are just units sold in stores, and really not surprising, if one asks how many Linux stand alone units are solid in stores that would also be an interesting number, and a great comparison from XP to Vista in relationship to Linux in general, then broken down by major supplier, Red Hat, SuSe, Ubuntu, etc. Those would be much more interesting numbers, especially if taken over a long period of time, say since the release of XP.

The good thing is that Todd Bishops blog over at the Seattle PI goes to great length to make sure that people understand these are just one form of number, and not an overall picture. Rather a small segment making up less than 20% of overall sales. Microsoft willingly admits that most of their sales for operating systems comes at the PC OEM level, and not in box sales.

While interesting, it is such a small segment of overall sales that it is going to be interesting to see how this is blown out in the news to indicate that all of Vista is in trouble. It is not a perfect operating system, it does have its issues, and many will wait until the service pack comes out. Business adoption will help drive home adoption, and everything right now rides on business making vista work in the enterprise.

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Tag: Windows Vista

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About the Author:
Dan Morrill has been in the information security field for 18 years, both civilian and military, and is currently working on his Doctor of Management. Dan shares his insights on the important security issues of today through his blog, Managing Intellectual Property & IT Security, and is an active participant in the ITtoolbox blogging community.


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