Windows Vista sales are lamentable, and lamentable is an understatement. But the use of any euphemisms will not be able to hide the fact that the Wow momentum has worn out almost completely, and that Vista is delivering a poor performance in terms of sales. Microsoft has applauded selling in excess of 60 million Vista licenses in the operating system's first six months of availability. But the Redmond company also managed to reveal that Vista sales were virtually in the gutter by mid 2007. Microsoft has delivered its 2007 annual report to shareholders, and in it, it reveals the total figure for Vista sales in Fiscal Year 2007.

"Fiscal 2007 saw many successful product launches, led by the release of Windows Vista, the newest version of our desktop operating system. In fiscal 2007, we sold more than 55 million Windows Vista licenses (emphasis added). The 2007 Microsoft Office system also enjoyed an extremely successful launch, enabling us to sell more than 71 million Microsoft Office licenses in fiscal 2007," reads a fragment of the Microsoft shareholders letter.

The Microsoft fiscal year 2007 debuted on July 31, 2006 and finished on June 30, 2007. So between July 31, 2007, and June 30, 2007, Microsoft only managed to ship a total of 55 million licenses of Windows Vista. This aspect is important to note since Vista was launched for businesses on November 30, 2006, and for the general consumers on January 30, 2007. This means that in the seven months Vista was available, between December 2006 and through June 2007, Microsoft only pushed 55 million copies of the operating system. But why is June so important? The answer lies with something Kevin Turner, Microsoft Chief Operating Officer said on July 26 at the Financial Analyst Meeting 2007.

"So let's talk about deployment. So this is a new number for you: 60 million units sold to date (emphasis added). So really if you do over the last six months since our consumer launch, 60 million units have been sold of Windows Vista into the marketplace. And you know by our math we eclipse the entire install base of Apple in the first five weeks that this product shipped", Turner revealed at the time.

Wait, to date? But this means that in July 2007, Microsoft only sold a total of five million copies of Windows Vista worldwide. This is four time less than the 20 million Vista licenses Microsoft sold in the platform's first month on the market or the additional 20 million it served in March and April. Have customers stopped buying Vista?