Vista Metrics

[Guest Chad Harris]

MSFT's vast percentage of profit in Vista in particular and any new OS in

general is OEM preinstalled Vista. That's why they tromp on the OEM named

partners with a heavy boot not to ship you a Vista DVD with your expensive

marked up new pc purchase.

 

While Bill Gates and others brag that they have sold 60 million Vistas

mainly through forcing its sale through a preinstalled OEM machine sale,

sales of Vista are lagging

far behind sales of XP at this particular date.

 

Sinofsky wanted it shipped and ship it did. SP1 doesn't fix most of the

bugs in

Vista and in fact it does not even come close. The main improvement of SP1

is that it delivers the Win RE Fix Vista environment to all the poor slobs

who got it.

 

Running the numbers on Vista

By Ina Fried

http://www.news.com/Running+the+numbers+on+Vista/2100-1016_3-6207375.html?tag=item

 

Story last modified Tue Sep 11 13:51:38 PDT 2007

 

Sales of boxed copies of Windows Vista continue to significantly trail those

of Windows XP during its early days, according to a soon-to-be-released

report.

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.

 

"It's just not doing well," NPD analyst Chris Swenson said of Vista's

performance at retail stores, though he added that most people get their

operating system on new PCs, with only a minority of customers purchasing

boxed copies. The report, titled "Windows Vista Still Underperforming in

U.S. Retail," will be sent to clients Friday.

 

Microsoft also agreed that an analysis of boxed copy sales is not

representative of Vista's momentum, noting the trend of people getting a new

operating system with a new PC has further accelerated with Vista.

 

"While we can't comment on the findings of a report we haven't seen, we

continue to be on track in all segments we follow," the company said in a

statement to CNET News.com. "As of this summer, more than 60 million

licenses have been sold."

 

 

Microsoft noted in a regulatory filing that more than 80 percent of its

Windows revenue comes from computer makers that install the operating system

on new machines, with boxed copies accounting for only a fraction of total

sales. And the PC market is far larger than it was five years ago. According

to research firm Gartner, roughly 239 million PCs were sold worldwide last

year, compared with 128 million in 2001.

 

In many ways, sales of Vista are tied closely to the rate of PC sales. One

of the big variables is how quickly businesses move to adopt Vista. Most

businesses are not moving to the operating system in significant numbers

yet, though Microsoft has begun to tout a few large deployments from

corporations including Infosys, Citigroup, Charter Communications and

Continental Airlines.

 

Ahead of Vista's release, the software maker said that it expected

businesses to adopt the new operating system at twice the rate of XP during

its first year on the market.

 

However, many businesses have said they are waiting until Microsoft releases

the first update to Vista before considering deployments of the operating

system. Microsoft is starting beta testing of its first service pack for

Windows Vista, though that update won't be released in final form until next

year.

 

News on the retail front is brighter for Office, which was released to

stores the same day as Vista.

 

Retail sales of Office products from January through June were roughly

double those of Office 2003 during its first six months on the market and up

59.6 percent from Office sales for the first six months of last year. (Sales

of Office 2003 at retail continued to grow over the life of the product.)

 

While much of the sales were for the new Office 2007, Swenson said just over

20 percent of all boxed copies of Office were Office for Mac. Swenson

credited the large number of people switching to Macs as part of the reason

for the spike in Mac Office sales.

 

"If I buy a new PC I can reuse old Windows software," Swenson said. But, if

someone is switching from a PC to a Mac and wants Office, he said, "you have

to buy new software."

 

NPD's data comes from its monthly sales reports of software sold at major

retailers including Best Buy, CompUSA, Target and Apple's retail stores. It

also includes e-commerce sites such as Amazon.com, Buy.com and BestBuy.com.

 

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process

As for why Vista sales are down, Swenson said it is probably because of a

number of factors. More stringent hardware requirements mean that more

buyers who want Vista decide to get a new PC, particularly as computer

prices have come down so steeply compared with XP's early days. Also, he

said, Microsoft has done less advertising than it did with XP.

 

"The problem is that there are a lot of complex new features in Vista, and

you need to educate consumers about them," Swenson said. "Much like Apple

educating the masses about the possibilities of the iPhone, or focusing on a

single feature or benefit of the Mac OS in the Mac vs. PC commercials,

Microsoft should be educating the masses about the various new features in a

heavy rotation of Vista in TV, radio and print ads. But the volume of ads

has paled in comparison to the ads run for XP."

 

Just because boxed Vista sales are down doesn't mean they won't pick up, he

added. He noted that XP sales peaked a few years after its 2001 launch.

 

"My hypothesis as to why is that there were a lot of people that bought PCs

running 2000 or ME before the XP launch, and thus when they decided to

upgrade they opted for the XP upgrade awhile after their initial purchase,"

Swenson said. "There is a possibility that we might see a similar trend with

Vista."

 

But given the fact that only relatively new PCs can be upgraded to Vista,

and with standalone sales not showing signs of improving, Swenson said,

"it's looking less and less likely that this will happen."

 

CH