Only 244 Genuine Windows Vista's Sold in China

morpheus83 writes "Whilst Microsoft was bragging about the sales number of their latest OS Windows Vista, few would actually know that they have only managed to sell 244 copies in the whole of China in the first 2 weeks. You heard that right, and that's the number quoted from the headquarters of the Windows Vista chief (90% national volume) distributor in Beijing."

244?

[SnarfQuest]

That's gross + 100.

Well...

[ioshhdflwuegfh]

Records are there to be broken.

From as Bad as Piracy is in China

[dctoastman]

I think every single legitimate sale could be considered a victory.

Not to worry

[lurker412]

There are 8,576,336 users already.

Another Embarrassing Figure

[Anonymous Coward]

The other embarrassing figure Windows failed to release was that they have 243 employees in China--revealing that the only other copy is unaccounted for but, curiously enough, has been verified as 'genuine' by the WGA website five billion times.

Woohoo

[faloi]

Next on /., stories about how piracy is hurting MS!

Re:From as Bad as Piracy is in China

[garcia]

I think every single legitimate sale could be considered a victory.

From Microsoft's perspective. From the user's perspective it can be considered a loss.

No worries, they can spin it...

[Penguinisto]

I mean, if they can make the Zune sales look like an iPod killer (e.g. "we're the #2 selling hard-drive based digital music player in the 30GB range! we pwnz0rs!!!!1!"), Microsoft is liable to be nearly orgasmic with delight in describing Vista's position as the "top selling multi-GB-sized DirectX10 inclusive DRM-based GUI-based OS" in China...

/P

Bill gates says ...

[sarathmenon]

244 copies ought to be enough ....

Re:From as Bad as Piracy is in China

[seyyah]

Hell, at this rate they might even top the 3,628 copies of XP sold in China so far.

"Vista's"

[ncc05]

Ummm...not to be too pedantic, but I've never heard of "Windows Vista's". I have heard of Windows Vista, the plural of which is "Vistas".

Re:Well...

[thepotoo]

Yeah, really. This is the kind of story so amazing it doesn't deserve the haha tag - it deserves a buahaha tag.

It would have been less.

[Rob T Firefly]

Blame that one clumsy pirate who failed to stick the disc into his drive without scratching it 243 times beforehand.

Re:244? Yes 244 master copies

[rapidmax]

That are 244 master copies for the pirates...

Limits of growth

[Anonymous Coward]

640 kopies should be enough...

Therefore expect 100% market penetration in China in approximately 3 more weeks.

Re:"Vista's"

[zxnos]

you misread, vista owns the selling in china.

Re:Piracy is theft

[gandy909]

That's right! Especially if you were never going to purchase it for any reason whatsoever anyway. They still have the cd to sell that you were never going to buy. Flame me, I dare you!

I'm surprised it's that many

[stratjakt]

China has been pretty frank about not giving a crap about piracy.

Who are the 244 morons who actually paid?

Re:244 Vista users?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that mean you're still using XP? LOL.

You an antique collector?

Commie Chinese only need ONE chinese sale

[Anonymous Coward]

Commie Chinese only need ONE chinese sale then EVERYBODY has the chinese version of vista. Whaduya expect from a peasant farmer demographic, tivo users?.

Unfortunately

[arcite]

It seems all 244 copies were sold to Microsoft's Beijing quality testing center.

Re:How on earth..

[flitty]

1. Uh, an anti-M$ story making it to the front page surprises you? You must be new here.

2. I, for one, welcome our new pirate overlords.
3. ????
3. Profit!!!

Re:From as Bad as Piracy is in China

[OK PC]

Well it is 243 more sales than in Russia...

Re:Vista Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh you must be referring to that communist thing that's funding the capitalist US's deficits. Yeah what a failure it must be.

Re:Things working against them.

[rikkus-x]

The problem isn't necessarily the money. It's the culture and attitude toward IP in the US. I know a bunch of rich kids in the US and most of them have never bought a DVD in their life. They download all their software, movies, etc.

Re:I dispute #5

[cp.tar]

In China there are millions of people making enough money to afford a legit copy of Vista.

Mayhaps. But very few of those earn that kind of money by buying trash and keeping it.

Re:Cost

[News for nerds]

Windows Vista is a client OS and even the Chinese know desktop Linux is dead (please don't mod this as troll k thx!).

To be fair, the multilingualization in Vista is done by MUI so you can turn your English Vista into the Chinese version fairly easily. But the packaging and shipping cost really doesn't make sense, they could release the Chinese Vista only in a downloadable version via network.

Out and out ignorance

[Cathoderoytube]

Microsoft apparently doesn't know much about China. Since during their ad campaign for Vista they cast a giant ad on the Jin Mao tower. Everybody knows the Jin Mao tower is haunted by a headless horseman. So naturally the reason why Vista isn't selling is because people think the headless horseman in the Jin Mao tower is trying to trick people into installing inferior software on their computer.

Re:Piracy is NOT theft

[Belial6]

"By your logic, if I make a burger at home, I'm stealing from McDonald's."

Only if you put thousand island dressing on it.

That's weird...

[lelitsch]

I think I saw a single street vendor on Qianmen Lu sell about 200 genuine Vista DVDs in less than an hour.

Aha!

[DCheesi]

Now Micro$oft knows that there are exactly 244 bootleg-software manufacturers in China!

Well, 243, plus that one idiot who actually bought a copy to use...

Re:244? Yes 244 master copies

[websaber]

It used to be one disk one country, Sales are up 244,000,000 percent!

Re:"Vista's"

[oddsends]

No, no...
It was a Vistake in zer marketing prohgram...

Re:244?

[sentientbeing]

See?!

Communism DOES work.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:What's funny

[hxnwix]

What? I was told that everything used in China was made in Rand McNally.

I was misinformed!