Windows Vista failed to surpass the market performance of Windows XP in the debut month. Despite this aspect, Vista's sales outperformed even the most optimistic forecasts, according to data made public by the NDG group.

Initially, Microsoft planned to outpace Windows XP's market performance in the debut month by selling double than its predecessor operating system. Microsoft is far from those predictions as the commercial revenue for Windows Vista is 3.7% smaller than that produced by Windows XP back in November 2001. The fact that the adoption rate for Vista is slower than that for XP is illustrative of the difficulties Microsoft will come against in convincing a market dominated by XP to make the swap.

Microsoft needs to turn up the volume and to implement a more aggressive marketing strategy via the business channels if Vista is going to outperform XP on an operating system market dominated by... XP.

In this context, the Redmond Company's main marketing effort for Vista will debut concomitantly with the operating system's general availability scheduled for January 30, 2007. In this aspect, Vista and XP are not on the same level due to the fact that XP had benefited from marketing support the minute it was debarked to consumers.

"I think these results could be classified as strong, or at least stronger than expected," commented NPD analyst Chris Swenson. "Although Vista dollars were slightly lower than XP dollars in its first full month, I consider Microsoft's December results to be very impressive, given the commercial-only 'soft launch' approach that Microsoft took with the OS. Assuming Microsoft does a better job of marketing Ultimate to small businesses and other organizations, we might actually see sales of Ultimate increase in the commercial channel over time."

The fact that Vista managed a 3.7% narrow gap compared with XP's performance without a consistent marketing campaign raised eyebrows among analysts that did not expect the operating system to perform this well.

"Sometime after January 30, when Microsoft makes Vista available to the general public and ratchets up the marketing campaign, I suspect that we will likely see sales of Vista in the commercial channel begin to meet or surpass levels previously set by XP," Swenson added. "Assuming Microsoft does a better job of marketing Ultimate to small businesses and other organizations, we might actually see sales of Ultimate increase in the commercial channel over time."