14 DAY TRIAL // Windows Vista, Microsoft's latest operating system was initially introduced to businesses in November 2006. The consumer launch followed in January 2007, and from the debut of the "Wow is now," Microsoft repeatedly applauded Windows Vista success story, as the company sold millions upon millions of Windows Vista licenses worldwide. The latest news related to the market performance of the operating system came at the Financial Analyst Meeting 2007 on July 26, from none other than Kevin Turner, Microsoft Chief Operating Officer - 60 million licenses sold.
"So let's talk about deployment. So this is a new number for you: 60 million units sold to date," Kevin revealed. "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." But there is a problem with the 60 million sold Vista licenses figure. Microsoft won't confirm it, well at least according to ZDNet. The Redmond company only felt comfortable reiterating the fact that it had sold 40 million Vista licenses, a number two months old.
So is Microsoft contradicting itself? What's really behind the 60 million sold Vista copies in the first six months of availability? Well, the contradiction is generated by the way Microsoft understands to use the term sold, when they actually mean shipped. The Redmond company indeed shipped 60 million licenses of the operating system. But this figure does not accurately reflect sales or even the installed base. Despite this, Microsoft did not lose the opportunity to reveal that it "eclipsed" Apple with Vista.
And it all started on March 26, 2007. This is the date Microsoft delivered the first statistics related to Vista sales. According to the company, Vista had sold over 20 million licenses in the first month on the market. "Initial sales figures from Microsoft show its new operating system Windows Vista made a splash in its debut. In the first month of Windows Vista's general availability, sales exceeded 20 million licenses, more than doubling the initial pace of sales for its predecessor, Windows XP," Microsoft stated at the time in a press release.
Then on May 15, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates commented that Vista had an installed base larger than any other rival operating system. "We've had nearly 40 million copies sold, and so that's twice as fast as the adoption of Windows XP, the last major release that we've had. If you think about that, that says that in our first five weeks we've matched the entire installed base of any other provider of similar software. So just in five weeks we've gotten out to those levels," Gates stated at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2007 in Los Angeles in mid May.
Data provided by Market Share by Net Applications indicates that Vista accounts for approximately 4.5% of the operating system market at the end of June. And Microsoft is confirming just 40 million actually sold Vista copies, and claims to have shipped some 60 million licenses. But if at the end of February Vista accounted for 20 million sold licenses, then two months later at the start of May it had 40 million, and almost three months later, towards the end of July it had 60 million, then doesn't that mean that Vista adoption is in fact slowing down?