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Bill Gates slips up, unintentionally reveals that majority of new PCs ship without Windows Vista

“Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system is proving far less popular with new PC buyers than Windows XP did during XP’s first year on the market, if statements by company chairman Bill Gates at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show are any measure,” Paul McDougall reports for InformationWeek.

“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.]

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