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Microsoft Proves Vista Is Not a Failure with 180 Million Licenses SoldSales of the operating system exploded after SP1 |
By Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor
18th of July 2008, 14:48 GMT
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Windows Vista might not be the top seller that Microsoft had forecast before the operating system hit the shelves at the end of January 2007, but the latest Windows client is by no means a failure. Quite the opposite, in fact; according to the Redmond giant, Vista has sold over 180 million licenses in its first
year and a half on the market. On July 17, 2008 Microsoft posted its financial results for the 2008 fiscal year ended June 30, 2008. A consistent slice of the total $60 billion revenue in the company's past fiscal year was brought in by the Windows Client division, specifically by Windows Vista.
The Windows Client division accounted for a revenue of $4,3 billion just in the fourth quarter of FY2008, up 15% from just $3.8 billion in the same quarter of the past year. As far as the whole of FY2008 is concerned, the revenue produced by sales of the Windows Client division are over $16,8 billion, a consistent increase (13%) over the approximately $15 billion of FY2007. In the last quarter of the 2008 fiscal year, Microsoft obtained a profit of Profit $3.23 billion from its sales of Windows.
Microsoft was little hesitant of indicating that Windows Vista sales were responsible for the high revenue of the Windows Client division. The bottom line is that the Redmond company is proving that there is strong demand for its latest version of the Windows client, and that the operating system is indeed selling, even with Windows XP Service Pack 3 and Windows 7. In May 2008, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates announced that Vista had passed the 140 million sold licenses milestone, which means that sales of the operating system exploded to a high of 20 million units per month following the general availability of Service Pack 1.
At this point in time, Windows Vista is credited with a share of 16.14% of the operating system market, a figure which is consistent with an install base of just over 160 million Vistas. However, Microsoft is traditionally counting not the copies of the platform that were actually sold to customers, but all the licenses shipped into the channel, meaning also the Vista platforms that went to retail outlets and original equipment manufacturers, despite the company's claim that "Windows Vista (...) has sold over 180 million licenses since launch".
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Very Good (4.0/5) |
4 vote(s) so far |
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User opinions: |
| Comment #1 by: Chris on 18 Jul 2008, 17:32 GMT |  reply to this comment | Microsoft is deceiving the public by counting some sales of XP in these numbers. Any business purchases taking advantage of the Vista Business downgrade to XP Pro (through Dell and other vendors) are technically counted as a Vista License sale, since the machines are licensed for Vista, but have XP Pro installed from the factory. So XP machines may still be outselling Vista overall, but M$ won't tell anyone that, especially themselves. |
| Comment #2 by: rasmasyean on 18 Jul 2008, 21:43 GMT | reply to this comment | How many are "sold" in China? :P |
| Comment #3 by: Mick R. on 19 Jul 2008, 09:37 GMT | reply to this comment | Well of course they moved that many licenses! When you can't buy a new PC without that OS unless you go to extraordinary lengths, what do people expect to happen!
Claiming Vista is a success based on forced sales is like claiming that the air in Chicago is fantastic because 9.7 million people "choose" to breathe it. |
| Comment #4 by: rasmasyean on 19 Jul 2008, 21:06 GMT | reply to this comment | OK here’s some rough calculations:
16.14% of net users are Vista
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=11
1.4 billion users
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
Assuming the usage rate is consistent around the world…
1.4 billion * 16.14% = 226 million Vista internet users
The only way the user base would be significantly less than this number is if for some reason, Vista users surf the internet WAY MORE than all other OS's to skew the percentage up to 16.14%. I highly doubt this. And it’s probably more likely that that some Vista users don’t use the internet much because it’s for work mostly. Hence more likely there are more than 226 million Vista users. |
| Comment #5 by: Adam Ant on 23 Jul 2008, 12:33 GMT | reply to this comment | Microsoft includes TechNet subscription licences in that result which, are where most of the "sales" have been made. Each of the TechNet licences entitles IT administrators up to four or five different Vista licences from the one subscription.
These figures released by Microsoft are fudged and twisted. I don't deny they have released 180 million licences but I would question how many real sales have been made. |
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