As much as I'd love to poke holes in Microsoft's sales numbers, the truth is that I can't. Why? Well, because whether it's 17 million copies or 20 million copies, that's still a ton of copies of Windows Vista sold at a time when it is NOT a holiday shopping season.
So the point remains that if only 17 million copies of Windows Vista was sold in its first YEAR of release (instead of the first two or three months as reported here) months, then that would still be a massive amount compared to the ENTIRE Mac installed user base.
It just proves how tough it is to topple a monopoly, unfortunately.
What I'd like to know is how many of those buyers were businesses and how many were home users.
While it is amusing to see Vista getting a lukewarm reception at best, in the short term it does not matter.
It is hard to avoid Vista. Once DirectX 10 settles in, the gamers will switch. With the gamers come the family members they advise, and the windows hipsters and geeks.
It'll be damn hard to avoid vista in retail, so it'll be a roaring financial succes in the short to mid-term.
Long-term it might just piss of enough users and that Red hat, Novell and Apple become more credible alternatives, which might dock a few points off MS's market share.
Already we are seeing a shift in mindset. Apple's getting more popular with both developers and businesses. The Linux-ecosystem is also growing rapidly. These processes do however take a lot of time.
Then again, MS is such a behemoth that it's hard to see a way for the company to fail short of massive regulatory action by the US or EU. Apple can't be bought by MS, and Linux can't be bought up either, due to the free and open licences. This means that MS will probably not have the option to buy their way out of the technological swamp that is called windows, but has to make the effort internally. Succeed or fail, that process too will take time.
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So the point remains that if only 17 million copies of Windows Vista was sold in its first YEAR of release (instead of the first two or three months as reported here) months, then that would still be a massive amount compared to the ENTIRE Mac installed user base.
It just proves how tough it is to topple a monopoly, unfortunately.
What I'd like to know is how many of those buyers were businesses and how many were home users.
You really gotta check out alansky's reference (post #87). MS' 20 million number does not compute.
From the article:
"The number's meaning collapses for three simple reasons:
* Microsoft's sales period for the license sales is significantly longer than 30 days?more like four months.
* License sales into the channel do not correspond to actual Vista PC sales out of the channel.
* The numbers don't match up with real world PC sales volumes."
It is hard to avoid Vista. Once DirectX 10 settles in, the gamers will switch. With the gamers come the family members they advise, and the windows hipsters and geeks.
It'll be damn hard to avoid vista in retail, so it'll be a roaring financial succes in the short to mid-term.
Long-term it might just piss of enough users and that Red hat, Novell and Apple become more credible alternatives, which might dock a few points off MS's market share.
Already we are seeing a shift in mindset. Apple's getting more popular with both developers and businesses. The Linux-ecosystem is also growing rapidly. These processes do however take a lot of time.
Then again, MS is such a behemoth that it's hard to see a way for the company to fail short of massive regulatory action by the US or EU. Apple can't be bought by MS, and Linux can't be bought up either, due to the free and open licences. This means that MS will probably not have the option to buy their way out of the technological swamp that is called windows, but has to make the effort internally. Succeed or fail, that process too will take time.