14 DAY TRIAL // 40 million Windows Vista licenses sold in just the first 100 days of general availability. Vista has cruised past rival software solutions and, in the first five weeks on the shelves, managed to gather a superior installed base compared to its direct competitors. Accounting for in excess of 3% of the operating system market at the end of April 2007, Windows Vista is the third most popular operating system worldwide following Windows XP and Windows 2000.
Present at the Microsoft Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2007 in Los Angeles, Chairman Bill Gates applauded the 40 million Vista licenses sold revealing that the operating system is right on track to outsell Windows XP by two to one. However, Vista's success and adoption rate are limited to the platform alone.
High-tech market research firm In-Stat made public the result of a survey revealing that Windows Vista has in fact failed to impact customer demand and sales of personal computers. In-Stat's conclusion is valid for both the pre-Vista 2006 holiday season but also for the period following the consumer launch of the operating system. Microsoft's latest operating system did not deliver a major distortion to the mechanics of worldwide PC sales in the last six months, and In-Stat predicts that Vista will continue to only superficially affect the computer market.
"System sales that had been muted waiting for systems pre-loaded with Vista rather than XP are expected to work through sales channels in the next two quarters," said In-Stat analyst Ian Lao. "However, these sales represent an offset from last year rather than actual new demand creation." In-Stat confirmed in this manner that computer sales have indeed suffered from Windows Vista's delay to January 30, 2007. Microsoft's "Vista Express Upgrade" coupon program helped only insignificantly with driving additional consumer demand. "The consumers that held off on buying a new PC until Vista arrived, that demand will have been serviced by the end of the second quarter this year," Lao added.
According to In-Stat, Windows Vista's market availability will not contribute in any major way to the 300 million computers which the research firm forecasts to be sold by 2009.