14 DAY TRIAL // Following the bumpy ride of Microsoft's latest client since its debut on the shelves at the end of January 2007, and on the background of a still consistent general preference for Windows XP, Windows Vista's faith seemed to linger in a precarious balance between being adopted or ignored. However, the company's strong financial results in the first quarter of the 2008 fiscal year ended on September 30, contradict such a scenario, placing Vista in the limelight. With Microsoft reporting the fastest growing first-quarter revenue since 1999, the company is starting to send out signals that Vista is not only here to stay but that the operating system has yet to deliver its true impact on the market.
In this sense, the president of the Platforms & Services Division of Microsoft, Kevin Johnson, revealed that the company is experiencing an increase in the demand for the platform as well as favorable numbers that point to an increase pace of the uptake in the corporate environment. Businesses, already notably slow at migrating to new technologies, be them hardware or software upgrades, have as far been quite shy of transitioning to Vista from older Windows operating systems.
But instead of throwing down the gauntlet, Microsoft is forecasting optimistic adoption rate for Vista, informing that businesses are starting to get cozy with the operating system, almost a year since it was launched for corporate customers, and that the holiday season looks promising. To this date, the Redmond company has shipped in excess of 88 million copies of Vista worldwide, roughly 10 million licenses per month since the product's release.
The Client division, driven by the Vista numbers, experienced a 27% increase in revenue in the past quarter, with consumer demand evolving in double-digit growth. According to Microsoft, the premium editions of the operating system are the most successful with end users, even though they are also the most expensive.