“Microsoft’s claim of 20 million Vista licenses sold simply doesn’t add up when trying to assess who realistically bought them in the time frame—’in the opening month’—stated in today’s press release,” Joe Wilcox reports for eWeek’s Microsoft Watch.
“Further, the press release claims that ‘Windows Vista made a splash in its debut,'” Wilcox reports.
Wilcox asks, “What kind of Kool-Aid are they drinking up there in Redmond? Who spiked the Windows Vista-logo soda cans?”
“‘Clearly there haven’t been 20 million PCs sold worldwide since Jan. 30, and we’re really only talking about February,’ said Stephen Baker, NPD’s vice president of industry analysis,” Wilcox reports. “License sales are good public relations fodder, but they’re real world merits stop there. By every reasonable measure—PCs and retail boxed sales—Microsoft’s numbers don’t add up with the 20 million figure in one month.”
“The company used the 20 million in-one-month figure compared to 17 million Windows XP licenses in two-and-a-half months to bolster its Vista gangbusters sales claim,” Wilcox reports. “Just like vulnerability alerts aren’t a good measure of Vista security, number of licenses sold is no way to reckon the operating system’s sales success.”
The number’s meaning collapses for three simple reasons:
• Microsoft’s sales period for the license sales is significantly longer than 30 days—more like four months.
• License sales into the channel do not correspond to actual Vista PC sales out of the channel.
• The numbers don’t match up with real world PC sales volumes.
Wilcox reports, “By my accounting, Vista is actually off to a slower start than Windows XP, using real world comparisons.”
Wilcox looks at the numbers in depth in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: In years past, Microsoft would have been lauded for terrific sales, no questions asked. Stock those mutual funds with MSFT, boys, and keep furtively wiping those drives and reinstalling those OSes every six months, wink wink! Not so today, as more and more people are seeing what’s always been blatantly obvious to so many of us Mac users: The Emperor Has No Clothes. No wonder Gates and Ballmer are so unhinged in interviews lately: even places called “Microsoft Watch” can see it now.
Related articles:
Gartner analyst: Microsoft’s Windows Vista sales ‘aren’t all that great’ – March 26, 2007
Wired: Distinct sea change in people’s perceptions of Apple: Macs will save you money – March 20, 2007
$399 for Windows Vista Ultimate?! (Hint: Get a Mac) – August 29, 2006
fsck yeah!
I got vista for free (legally mind you!) but i’m sticking with xp for my pc gaming machine
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Vista crashed my product launch.
the emperor has a small willie too!
Microsoft need to be very, very careful about these sales claims. They can be prosecuted for securities fraud if they are misleading investors by inflating sales figures.
Hahahah, every six months? I reinstall XP every two months, if not every month. (Don’t kill me just yet; I’m getting a MacBook as my next comp).
Even the Windows weenies aren’t buying it. Amazing.
Crashing isn’t a problem. Jesus saves.
*** $ell your $oul to the Devil ***
“Basic” prices from only $199.
Or pay the “Ultimate” price for $399.
Down from $666, or free with the purchase of any PC.
ChrissOne:
Not only does Jesus save (first and often), he also backs up.
More about stuffing the channels here . .
http://www.roughlydrafted.com
I love this blog
I am with you, razor. I have been reading this blog fervently, especially the articles that discuss why Apple is building an Exchange competitor.
Read how CALs make Windows servers cost companies XXX times the amount of an OS X server. Employees on Exchange need one for Windows Active Directory, and one for Exchange server. Apple servers come with unlimited licensing, so no Client Access Licenses.
Read more at roughlydrafted.com peeps. You’ve drank the kool-aid. Now eat the facts.
Cheers,
rasterbator
If 20 Million is true, doesn’t that just about eclipse the total number of Mac users?
MDN Magic Word “truth” Who can handle the truth?
wings2sky…
Some say there are 22 or 23 million Mac OS X users.
Who knows how many OS 9 and earlier Systems Mac users are running?
wings2Sky,
Cream rises to the top.
Extrapolate.
Just out of curiousity. Does anyone know: Does MS still hold any shares of Apple?
I was confronted with a statement that MS still owns “25% of Apple” and my search abilities could not turn up much useful information on this.
I know MS made a one time payment in 1997 of $150M and in exchange received non-voting shares (purportedly “Preferred” shares.) I know that Apple current has 0 shares of preferred stock outstanding (according to it’s own SEC filings).
So, does anyone have any source info as to how much of Apple stock, MS may hold? And what happened to MS 1997 holdings?
TIA
zac
Could they be counting the sales of all the desktop’s that are in boxes on the shelves at BestBuy and Circuit City and such that haven’t been sold to a person but the retailers have bought?
”Windows Vista made a splash in its debut,'” Wilcox reports.’
Seems like I remember the Zune splashing somewhere, too….
YEP, The WOW starts now.!!!
I just went to the site of the above article and — WOW are the PC guys arguing with each other. They are calling each other names like they used to call Apple users names.
There are PC fanboys vs more objective people.
There are MS fanboys vs more objective people.
There are PC fanboys vs MS fanboys.
There are MS will will cause I need a new PC and so I will just buy a pc later, fanboys.
But there are people yelling at each other on the MS side of the fence. It was fun to watch. Name call, inuendo, assume, give in, more name calling. ON and ON. Neat.
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ne
What would be better than MS getting investigated for fraud?
Oh, the joy.
ne, can you provide links to these sites? I’m looking for some amusement.
Thank you, thank you, Joe Wilcox and MDN, for stating the blatantly obvious and setting the record straight. When I saw that Microsoft claimed to have sold 20 million copies of Vista, my jaw hit the floor. “No friggin’ way,” said I. No way, not in a million years! Now the answer is completely clear: Microsoft lied, like they always do! I hope they do get prosecuted for securities fraud. It would totally serve them right. Microsoft couldn’t sell 20 million copies of Vista if their shriveled up, plastic-coated lives depended on it.
The $150M was for Apple to re-package and re-press MacOS 8 disks — with IE as default.
FWIW, Apple had one to two billion — depending on who you source — in the bank.
TinyFlaccid™ paid Apple an unreported $800M for stealing QuickTime code, and publicly promised to continue making ‘Office: Mac’ for five years.
I’ll bet a big chunk of the 20M Vista licences are part of large block licence sales to Dell and HP and others. Dell gets a better price if they promise to buy 10 million licenses – M$ counts that as 10 million sold.
@Maczac
Gee, OUR IT guy says that Bill Gates personally owns 56% of Apple.
And he says it with a straight face!!!
He also claims that Dell will be formatting their drives with OSX.
(I refuse to let him touch any computer I work on).