The second variant reflects reality more accurately

Sep 3, 2007 16:27 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft has applauded Windows Vista not only as its safest operating system on the market but also as the fastest selling Windows platform in the company's history. However, Vista seems to be losing its momentum. According to statistics published by Market Share by Net Applications, Vista's footprint on the operating system market has been growing at a slow and equal pace of approximately 1% per month. In this context, following the first seven months of consumer availability, Vista accounts for a share of 6.2% of the market. The percentage is correlated with the operating system market share for August 2007.

After the first six months since the January 30 launch, Microsoft touted no less than 60 million shipped Vista licenses worldwide. This means that Microsoft is pushing no more than an average of 10 million Vista copies from one month to another, but you also have to keep in mind that a ship license does by no means equal a sale. The Redmond company is in fact ready to confirm only some 40 million sold copies of the operating system. And yet, a 6.2% market share after seven months means that Microsoft's latest operating system is going nowhere fast.

With just four months until the end of the year and with the official confirmation that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 will be delivered after February 2007, the uptake of the operating system seems to be increasingly losing momentum. Vista is in danger to fail hitting the 100 million shipped copies by 2008, although the holiday sales boost also has to be taken into consideration. Still, at the current pace, it is highly unlikely that Vista will hit a 10% market share by the end of December.

Vista only grew from 5.41% in July to 6.26% in August. The past months Windows XP dropped from 81.40% to 80.48% and will go under the 80% mark this month if the trend keeps up. The various distributions of Linux gained some ground from 0.75% in July to 0.77% in August and so did MacIntel, which grew from 2.61% to 2.82%. There is however one more item to be added to the equation of the end of the year sales: Mac OS X Leopard. Apple is currently scheduled to make Leopard available in October. It remains to be seen how the latest Mac OS X will impact Windows Vista.