“Gates, in Las Vegas Sunday, boasted that Microsoft has sold more than 100 million copies of Windows Vista since the OS launched last January,” McDougall reports. “While the number at first sounds impressive, it in fact indicates that the company’s once dominant grip on the OS market is loosening. Based on Gates’ statement, Windows Vista was aboard just 39% of the PC’s that shipped in 2007.”
“Gates’ statements at the 2003 and 2008 Consumer Electronics Shows thus reveal — calculating roughly — that Windows XP captured about 67% of the new PC market during its first year. Vista, by contrast, captured just 39%, or less than half, of new PC shipments in 2007,” McDougall reports. “The numbers are no doubt troubling for Microsoft, which spent millions of dollars developing and promoting Windows Vista.”
McDougall reports, “Contributing to Vista’s woes is the fact that new desktop alternatives to the Windows operating system have emerged in recent years — including Apple’s beefed up Leopard…”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dirty Pierre le Punk” for the heads up.]
I guess those 100 million copies was a round up from like 10 or something.
For those that do not read the actual article or comments: see below, (Don’t you just love Apple OS X.
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“I’d like to see the down-conversion numbers on Vista… I know I have purchased in the neighborhood of 50 Vista PCs from Dell over the last year and, looking at my status board here, all but 5 of them have been rolled back to our VL of XP…
There are two reasons we’ve put XP on these expensive Vista boxes: Our clients normally don’t need Vista systems because they themselves don’t support it yet so we need more XP-based systems of the floor. But, I had to get Vista pre-loaded because there wasn’t any choice – let’s hear it for lock-in.
The other reason is that the few Vista boxes we do have in cirulation, according to the trouble ticket system, require almost a ten-fold amount of support ranging from “where is ‘X'” to “Can you make it stop asking every 3 seconds if it is ok to do something?” I’ve even seen a pre-built, pre-loaded Dell Vista machine, twice now, de-authorize itself due to too many hardware changes – from a KVM switch…
Seriously, park a graphic artist on a Vista system and have him or her get the current project from the fileserver… Initially they’re very happy with the shiny UI (they’re graphic folks afterall) but after about 30 minutes of Vista saying it’s completing the file transfer they go bonkers and end up here in my office looking for an XP cd. And that is only possible after we go and disable the highly annoying security in Vista – so we don’t even get that as a perk for running it.
Ultimately, at least here, Vista just doesn’t appear to be set up for ‘work’… Sure, the UI is pretty and DX10 will some day be a gamer’s paradise – but the costs for all this home-user bling just isn’t worth it in a business environment where supporting it costs money.”
I am glad that I don’t work in IT.
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en
to put it in perspective though, there are now more vista users than osx (intel and ppc)
Hey, Freud, your slip is showing…..
It seems to me that there is another factor here which the author has ignored.
Hasn’t it been M$ policy to count as sold the number of licences acquired by box makers, whether they make it out the door of the manufacturer or not?
There may actually be considerably fewer VISTA boxes out there than the numbers M$ reports shipped.
“to put it in perspective though, there are now more vista users than osx (intel and ppc)”
True, but that doesn’t make vista better than leopard.
en,
If you’re “parking graphic artists” on Windows (any version), you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.
In fact, you deserve to be shot. (Just kidding, but not by much.)
Spoken from someone who’s regularly refused to work in places where they couldn’t or wouldn’t provide the proper equipment (Macs).
Any “graphic artist” who’s “very happy” with Vista’s UI is not an artist.
In fact, they may be blind. (Not kidding about that one.)
My advice: Get some real graphic artists, ask them what they want, and then provide their requested Macs, so they can be more productive (or at least get their color correction right).
@bob
To put it in perspective though, there are now more Ford Focus drivers on the road than those in BMW’s (M3 or M5).
Sync or not (mostly not!), I’m not buying a Focus.
I was offered Vista recently and turned it down for xp at work. NO WAY would I mess with that monstrosity. I just wish they would’ve gotten me a MacPro.
As someone once said; “There are LOTS more cockroaches than humans on earth, does that make the cockroaches smarter than us ?”
(hmm… come to think about it, maybe they are ? but anyway Vista really is a diappointment)
# Fred Mertz
True.
But actually no one should be parked in front of Vista, without safety googles. It isn’t really good for any sort of work, nor is it good for gaming… Cold facts.
Mmmmm, beefed up leopard.
@ cptnkirk
“It seems to me that there is another factor here which the author has ignored.”
agree, and I read where MS was also counting the upgrade coupons they started giving out in Nov 06 as Vista sales, even if they weren’t turned in for an upgrade
There are a LOT more people driving a Ford than are driving a Porsche – Fords must be way better!
Speaking of slipping…Apple stock slid another $6 and change…..
Down nearly $25 now????
Calculating roughly- is that like not really thinking?
Fred Mertz,
WTF are you talking about? Ever since Photoshop finally came to the MAC in version 4 MAC sheep think they rule the graphic arts world. Vista is a work of art. Form meets function in new and enlightened ways. Microsoft’s color schemes are candy for the eyes. The quality of transparency and beautifully rendered drop shadows are magnificent. Arial is in all its glory. Kudos to Redmond for a job well done!
Cupertino, start your copiers, and this time hire a couple of people who understand and care about design when you implement human interface elements. Dorks.
Your potential. Our passion.™
“The numbers are no doubt troubling for Microsoft, which spent millions of dollars developing and promoting Windows Vista.”
Shouldn’t that be “hundreds of millions of dollars”??
Not hundreds of millions, try six years of development and Billions of dollars spent developing Vista…
Though Zune Tang® is our resident pot-stirrer (a Mac fanboy pretending to be a troll) we should all be sure of our facts; Photoshop 1.0 was a Mac only release in 1990.
@ Ted the Turnip Puller
In case you hadn’t noticed, America is busy entering a recession.
Apple stock isn’t going into the tank, the tech stocks aren’t going into the tank, the whole damn country is going into the tank.
Praise the war and pass the ammunition.
There! Do you feel it? The rumblings of a tectonic shift in the OS multiverse.
We are now changing direction toward one unifying OS.
OS X.
So 100 million Vista copies sold equals about 40% adoption/uptake, but as anyone who’s been around knows, the 100 million figure is exaggerated by as much as two thirds.
Let’s be generous and say half of those are actual sales…
That means something like 20% of all new PCs shipped had Vista on them.
Take it a bit further, at least *some* (some say as much as 30% again), of those vista PCs were then downgraded to XP.
I really think that the Windows guys are not quite seeing the extent of the disaster here. This is the worst smack in the face MS has ever had.
No wonder old Bill is being so magnanimous and self-effacing lately.
Fred Mertz,
Our entire company (including the graphics group) is working from a Windows platform. I’ve heard many times that the Mac platform is the preferred OS for graphic artists, but have never heard exactly why. Can you provide some specifics? Not trying to start a debate; just honestly curious as to why Macs are better for graphics work.
This is rich. As an independent IT tech I purchase PCs all the time for my clients. Some brands come with XP already loaded on them with a COPY OF VISTA on a disc. That’s a licensed copy. A copy that MS uses to tally their ‘sales’ of the OS.
But none of my clients use that disc. WE THROW IT AWAY. Thus, it is NOT used and NOT part of MS’s tally.
Yet, it’s considered sold. Who the F is fudging this data?