14 DAY TRIAL // Windows Vista is slowly but surely eroding the grip that Windows XP has over the operating system market. Microsoft's latest platform, made available to businesses in November 2006, and to the general public in January 2007, experienced a steady growth throughout the period of nine months since it hit the shelves. XP is going down in the Windows asphyxiated market, in order to make room for Vista, although the last operating system to come out of Redmond has had a rough ride since the launch. This is the natural conclusion that follows Microsoft's revenue report for Q1 2008, the Fastest First Quarter Since 1999.
In this regard, Vista has managed to establish itself as the Redmond company's main cash cow, driving a revenue of $4.14 billion and an operating income of $3.36 billion for the client division. "Microsoft announced revenue of $13.76 billion for the quarter ended September 30, 2007, a 27% increase over the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $5.92 billion, $4.29 billion and $0.45, respectively. Microsoft's businesses of Client, Microsoft Business Division, and Server and Tools grew combined revenue in excess of 20%, and experienced robust demand for Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, Windows Server, and SQL Server," Microsoft revealed.
In fact, Kevin Johnson, president of the Platform and Services Division at Microsoft, stated that Vista continues to enjoy strong, double digit growth as far as the adoption rate is concerned. Since the operating system became available, Microsoft pushed in excess of 88 million licenses worldwide. Of course that the figure is largely a matter of semantics, as Microsoft counts the entire volume of Vista copies shipped into the channel as "sold," and not the actual number of licenses actually purchased by end users or businesses.
Statistics made available by Net Applications at the end of September 2007, paint a picture that comes to confirm Microsoft's own perspective over the consistent growth in Vista uptake. XP is credited with 79% of the operating system market, down from 85% in January, while Vista increased its foothold from 0.18% in the first month of 2007 to 7.38% at the end of September.
While the share on the operating system market is not correlated with the sales of the product point for point, the discrepancy between the 7.38% and 88 million licenses shipped is a testimony of the fact that Microsoft takes into consideration the entire mass of Vista copies delivered, rather than counting just the sold copies. But still, at the current pace, with two more months until 2008, and with the holiday season looming, Vista is right on track to hit the 100 million shipped licenses by the end of December, an important milestone for Microsoft.