40M Vista Licenses in 100 Days 579
Gary writes "In the first 100 days since its launch in Jan 30 Windows Vista has sold an astounding 40 million licenses. Bill Gates gives the credit to accelerating consumer shift to digital lifestyles which has made it the fastest selling operating system in history. Surprisingly the more expensive premium editions accounted for 78 percent of Vista sales. With around 400,000 licenses a day new Vista users will take 8 weeks to beat Mac users, 4 days to exceed Mac sales and 3 days to exceed Linux desktop users."
Where did they get these numbers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Still doesn't say (Score:5, Insightful)
Waiting for it... (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Record profits in the last year
2) Fastest-selling OS in history
It's only getting better for them, isn't it? We need another way to fight them...
Re:Where did they get these numbers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm confused... (Score:1, Insightful)
Fastest? (Score:5, Insightful)
That wouldn't have anything to do with having more computers in the world NOW versus, you know, any other point in history?
In other news, the world's human population is the highest it's ever been in history.
Both. (Score:5, Insightful)
Vista isn't the failure that
-Rick
Re:I'm confused... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now we see with Vista? Same damn thing. "OMG no drivers, omg games, omg its slow, omg omg omg failure, I'll never upgrade from the previous version!"
Same. Damn. Thing. Hell, XP was worse: my 1 year old (at the time) lap-top had a hard time with XP, and I had paid a fortune for it. My 3 years old budget lap-top runs Vista just fine.
The only thing that can rival Microsoft's FUD, is the fud coming from thousands of geeks banded together
Re:I'm confused... (Score:5, Insightful)
The facts. And the facts are the Microsoft has been deferring the count of "Vista Upgrade Certificates" until the first quarter of 2007. So a large portion of the 40 million is from Vista licenses that Microsoft has been selling for the last year.
It's also important to note that there are no figures on how many of those upgrade certificates have been cashed in for an actual copy of Vista. Which means that the number of installed Vista Desktops could be a mere fraction of the 40 million unit number that Microsoft is providing.
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." --Mark Twain
Can we have some more useful numbers? (Score:3, Insightful)
How many of these businesses actually have moved their production systems onto vista?
How many of these were OEMs?
How many of those which were OEM have been reinstalled with XP (pirate or otherwise)
How many were free upgrade with XP systems?
How many of those used the upgrade and are still running vista now?
Its difficult to buy a PC without it! (Score:4, Insightful)
(Geeks can manage it but try getting a cool VIAO or ACER which isnt preloaded with Vista!)
The interesting statistics would be how may PCs sold with Vista have been back-graded to XP?
Judging by the various blogs etc. this would seem to be the only way to get your shiny
new box to run as fast as the old one.
Google "Vista The long goodbye" Results 1 - 10 of about 907,000
So thats 5% of Vista users hacked off about just one of the Vista bugs enough to blog or cry for help.
Give it until next year (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Where did they get these numbers? (Score:3, Insightful)
I know a couple that have. However most of them have subsequently given up on Vista and reinstalled XP.
Most of a couple?
Anyhow, I love Gates' insinuation of "if you aren't using Vista, you're trapped in some pre-digital lifestyle limbo."
Re:I'm confused... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
And since there are no more XP, well...
Re:Still doesn't say (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Waiting for it... (Score:4, Insightful)
That removes things like production costs and consumer choice from the equation.
We already fought them in court, and won. It's hard to gain much ground, however, when some elements of the government seems to be in bed with the company which is violating anti-trust laws...
Re:Where did they get these numbers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Be interesting to find out... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Where did they get these numbers? (Score:5, Insightful)
The world's largest OEM, Dell, has begun selling PCs with Windows XP again and will soon offer PCs with Ubuntu pre-loaded. These separate, but related incidents come on the heals of complaints from Dell customers who wanted a choice after they had tried Windows Vista and discovered it sucks.
40 million licenses != 40 million Vista users.
Typical Microsoft stretch marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
Fortunately, there are articles [theinquirer.net] that take a more rational view of how many copies of Vista are actually being sold.
The headline is simple, 40 million copies sold. Wow, we rox0rz! This is twice as fast as the XP adoption rate. What he didn't mention is that sales of PCs have more than doubled since XP came out. Silly Vole, no statistical cookie. The problem? Well, PCs sell at about 60 million units a quarter, and everyone we talk to expects sales of around 240-245 million units in 2007. Vista went on sale at the end of November for corporate customers, and one would expect a fair chunk of sales there from pent-up demand.
Re:Where did they get these numbers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Where did they get these numbers? (Score:4, Insightful)
I strongly doubt whether Gates needs to check with the folks in Legal when the folks in Accounting will do just fine.
And since neither you nor I works in that area, we'll have to defer to someone more qualified or at least informed to comment as to how the sales were booked and the rationale used. In the interim, lets enjoy the wild speculation, trusting in the notion that there's a grain of truth to all rumours.
Re:I'm confused... (Score:5, Insightful)
Get over it. People who disagree with you are not weak willed idiots infected by some "group think" mental virus.
Sold to whom? (Score:1, Insightful)
How come when Mozilla (or whoever) quotes number of copies downloaded (to imply users) we never say a word or dispute the figures but when MS gives figures then is no end to the outcries? Of course there is marketing BS but everyone does it. OK so cut that number by a third. Still good numbers.
I must have download FF at least the number of versions it has since day one but only 1 user.
Indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
Not "Vista License currently used to run the OS" or "machine currently running Vista in the wild".
Almost any of my non-Linux-using friends that I know to have recently changed their computer, got it with Vista pre-installed by default and had to either go through the "can I swap it for a Windows XP if I send you the media ?" procedure with the machine manufacturer or dig out one of their one "Win XP Pirate edition".
They are counted as "sold License". They don't run Vista any more.
So my interpretation of the data is :
40 * 10^6: Number of time Microsoft *sold Vista* (pre-installed on some machine at a time when the manufacturer didn't propose alternate OS)
4 : Number of users currently running Vista (and still waiting for their legal WinXP install media that they claimed from the manufacturer to come in their mailboxes).
What about our own dogfood? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In other other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:another way to fight (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux distributions come with more software than Microsoft Vista distribution.
Openoffice.org is a very capable replacement for Microsoft Office. Yes, some things are easier in Microsoft Office. And I would expect that -- after all, Microsoft Office costs a whole lot more.
Yes, Firefox "does something". So does the Linux kernel. Specifically, the Linux kernel manages hardware resources. Mark me as failing your intelligence test.
Less Vista licenses than PCs sold. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmm.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yup. You just have to look at the numbers. "HP's worldwide PC market share grew to 17.6 percent in the first quarter of 2007 with sales of just over 11 million units, according a preliminary report from Gartner Inc." (source) [itworld.com]. Do the math. The same article says that Gartner and IDC define 'PC' in a slightly different way, so their numbers are different, but they report worldwide sales of 67 million and 58.9 million, respectively. That's in a single quarter. If that sales pace has continued, that can easily account for a huge chunk of Vista sales.
Re:XO (Score:4, Insightful)
ALL of them--the story summary is a troll (Score:5, Insightful)
As for "beating" Mac numbers, Britney Spears also sells more CDs in a year than Mozart concerts do. If that's the kind of victory that Microsoft fanboys want to trumpet, go ahead. Meanwhile, Vista is a flop.
Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"beat Mac users" ??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:at least 39M of those... (Score:3, Insightful)
Your analogy is wrong. Those distributed licenses are more like consignments than they are sales. When a store gets computers on consignment to sell they can sell those to customers and the ones they can't sell generally go back to the company that sold them to you on consignment. I'm sure the rules are somewhat different for each company offering consignment sales.
In reality it is like the local baker that makes bread for various stores in town. The baker only gets paid for the bread that is sold to a customer. Those that go old and stale are given back to the baker or tossed by the baker and do not constitute a sale.
So, yes, they are saying that the license did exchange hands from Microsoft to another entity but they did not make it into the hands of the actual consumer for their use. That's a big difference. This is why people get upset at companies such as Microsoft that exaggerate these claims. It is that it makes others feel there's a greater success there then there is. It is an attempt at generating a fever in order to convince others to buy what think everyone else is buying.
The reality of it is that the hardware manufacturers are not experiencing increased sales and in fact, some leading hardware indicators are that sales are actually down. So, there's a lot of contradictory information here. Some from Microsoft which is now becoming the most untrustworthy company in the world, and the others from organizations that generally track these sales of hardware and software. The numbers that Microsoft has been touting are not matching up to the other leading indicators. For this reason people are trying to figure out why there are disparities. Without honest forthcoming numbers it'll take longer to see what actually happened. What Microsoft is doing is as bad as them sponsoring their own Polls and studies. We all know that those can't be trusted. It is only from independent 3rd parties that we can have some faith in the numbers.
So people are just saying that it is impossible that 40 million copies have been sold and are in the hands of the consumer that is actually going to use them (especially when you don't also state that the market is 2 times the size it was to the market Microsoft compared it to). The ratio of "sold vs. customers" is about the same or lower than XP sales. These Microsoft numbers were debunked about a month or so ago by very reputable groups, and even though this is the case Microsoft keep touting them as facts. They are facts, they are just misleading because all the picture hasn't been presented.
I'd estimate world-wide that there are some 50 million Linux users, probably more. Now that the update to Ubuntu is out I'd estimate a significantly greater number in the next year as Ubuntu is really a great desktop and it is a powerful desktop tool. You can do just about anything you want with it except play certain games or run Windows software. It is well structured, clean, well maintained, and once installed is good enough even for your granny to use.
As far as drivers go: the availability of drivers for old and new hardware is better than those available to Windows Vista users, even proprietary drivers. In Ubuntu you can even get proprietary drivers installed with a couple clicks of a mouse whereas with Windows you have to go to the website of the hardware manufacturer and download then install them.
This isn't to say that it is bad that you have to do that. It is to say that Ubuntu's implementation is quite nice and is very accessible to even the average user.
As far as things like playing DVDs goes even under Windows you have to purchase a commercial package that has the necessary CODEC to play back encrypted movies and then you have to install it.
Linux is extremely powerful an
Hm... lies, dammed lies and statistics (Score:3, Insightful)
Of the 40m licences how many are licences which came with a new PC?
Of the ones supplied with a new PC to firms how many firms left Vista on rather than reverting to XP?
Of the remainder how many still have an MS OS on them (we recently had about 10 PC's for a client supplied with vista, they left with Linux on them - I know we could have got them barebones pc's but they wanted a named (not dell) brand)?
Re:Hmm.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, here's the thing that bothers me about it.
Let's say that some years down the road, I radically reconfigure my system, or it crashes, or I replace the machine with something else completely, and I have to reinstall. I have to go to MS, again, and re-activate.
But suppose MS refuses... perhaps some kid has my product key out on the net, or I'm on some irrevocable government list that makes it a crime to sell to me, or maybe I have the same name as a known pirate, or because Vista's support window has closed, as Win95's and Win98's has.
Or... suppose MS can't because there are patent issues, or their activation servers crashed, or because a meteor wiped them off the face of the earth, or because the west coast suddenly fell into the sea, or because terrorists nuked them, or the northwest becomes an active volcano zone... or perhaps other things I could probably think of if I was feeling a little more creative.
Now let's imagine this same problem across all the desktops in the six businesses I own. That's a couple hundred machines. That's my livelihood, and the livelihood of all my employees. Now you have my full attention.
Activation is DRM that depends upon the good will, continuing existence, legal ability, and support policies of the company doing the activating.
The consequences of the OS not working include not being able to work with data once the grace period expires, in the cases where there is such a thing (30 days with Vista.) It can be moved, but if Vista has proven to be intractable, it would not make sense to continue trying to use Vista. If the data is moved to linux or OSX, the data may be lost anyway anyway, unless there are compatible programs that can translate it, or ports of those apps that can read it as if it was native.
So clearly, the smart thing is to go with an OS that doesn't give any crap about reinstalling it. That means, at least today, either OSX or linux. Now the only thing stopping machines from keeping on keeping on, as it were, are backup habits. Mine, and those controlled by me, have been honed to a pretty fine sensibility by 37 years of being involved with computers.
As far as I am concerned, MS went a step too far with product activation. My opinion only controls an incredibly miniscule portion of the market, and so I'm quite sure MS doesn't give a hoot on any level whatsoever, but that's no longer my problem, as I'm no longer tied to their OS either personally or with regard to my business operations.