14 DAY TRIAL // At the end of October 2008, Microsoft plans to introduce two new operating systems to the world, namely the next iteration of the Windows client and a platform designed for the Cloud (Internet). But even with a couple of fresh Windows OSes on the immediate horizon, Windows Vista continues to grab market share. Ahead of the Professional Developers Conference in Las Vegas starting on October 27, 2008, which is scheduled to deliver the first consistent taste of Windows 7 pre-Beta and Windows Cloud that Microsoft has yet to confirm as Windows Strata, Vista, now with Service Pack 1, climbed over the 180 million sold licenses and 18% market share.
In fact, Vista climbed to 18.33% of the operating system market at the end of September 2008, according to statistics made available by Net Applications. Back at the end of September 2007, Vista accounted for a usage share of just 7.41%. Of course that Vista's growth contributed to the depreciation of Windows XP's install base. At the start of this month, XP was down to 68.67% of the operating system market, and the descendant trend for Vista's precursor is bound to only get steeper and steeper as Windows 7 takes shape.
“We're here now about 18 months after Windows Vista shipped. We've shipped about 180 million units. We've had a chance to get market feedback and issue the first service pack. We've had a chance to work with the people who write the device drivers and applications. Those have mostly now been made compatible. You have your own corporate applications. We've had a chance to work with you on that for a while. Deployments in large corporations are now ramping up quite nicely across the world, but in the enterprise I would say we are still earlier,” Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer revealed at the start of October 2008.
Data released by CDW through Walker Information offers support for Ballmer's claims. According to CDW's Vista Tracking Poll, a survey conduced in the corporate environment with the participation of 772 IT decision makers, half of organizations are at some point in the deployment of Windows Vista. No less than 48% indicated that the process of evaluating, testing, or implementing Windows Vista is already in progress. Over 30% of organizations have in fact already fully deployed the operating system or were implementing it at the time of the survey. Half of the participants agreed that Vista's performance is above expectations when it comes down to critical areas.
With SP1 and the 2008 holiday season approaching fast, Windows Vista is without a doubt going for 200 million sold licenses by the advent of Windows 7 Beta, which is reportedly planned for mid-December 2008. There is no telling how the advent of Windows 7 pre-Beta and Beta along with the Beta for Windows (Cloud) Strata will influence Vista sales this year. However, the next version of the Windows client will without a doubt have a much severe impact on Vista's market share than the company's first fully-fledged Internet operating system. Still, with the release date of Windows 7 kept under wraps, consumers are making quite a gambit when it comes down to the decision to skip Vista and wait for its successor. This because Windows 7 might indeed drop by the end of 2009, but at the same time, it could be made generally available only at the start of 2010.
Windows Vista Service Pack 1 for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the operating system is available for download HERE.