Windows 7 tops Vista software sales, lags behind in hardware
Microsoft's heavily hyped Windows 7 debut was a success for the Redmond, Wash., company in terms of boxed software, which saw a 234 percent increase over Vista, though PC hardware sales slowed.
According to the NPD Group, the first few days of Windows 7 sales far exceeded that of Windows Vista. Revenue came in 82 percent higher as well, a number lower than the sales increase due to early discounts and a lack of promotional activity for the operating system's 'Ultimate' version.
One promotion run by Microsoft pushed copies of Windows 7 for $29.99 for a valid .edu e-mail address, making the OS essentially the same price for students as Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 upgrade. That deal runs through Jan 3, 2010.
The top-selling upgrade was Windows 7 Home Premium, with an average selling price of $76. It was followed by Windows 7 Pro at $147, and then the Home Premium Family Pack 3 User Upgrade, which costs $149.
"Microsoft's program of early low-cost pre-sales, high visibility marketing and aggressive deals helped to make the Windows 7 software launch successful," said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD. "In a slow environment for packaged software, Windows 7 brought a large number of customers into the software aisles."
Total Windows PC sales were up 49 percent year-over-year, and 95 percent from the week prior to its debut. But compared to the launch of Windows Vista, those numbers lagged behind by a total of 6 percent. Vista also managed to create a 68 percent year-over-year increase, and a 170 percent boost over the week before its launch.
"A combination of factors impacted Windows 7 PC sales at the outset, but the trajectory of overall PC sales is very strong leading into the holiday season," Baker said. "Vista had a slight advantage at launch, as January traditionally has a bigger sales footprint than October. The other hurdle Windows 7 faced was sales of PCs with older operating systems (XP and Vista) were high, making up 20 percent of sales during the Windows 7 launch, compared to just 6 percent of older operating systems during Vista's launch week."
Microsoft had a marketing blitz surrounding the debut of Windows 7, opening its first retail store in Scottsdale, Ariz., selling giant seven-pattied Whoppers in Japan, and encouraging users to throw home parties to demonstrate the new OS. Apple fired back with its own marketing blitz, criticizing the difficult process of upgrading a Windows XP machine to Windows 7. Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president for Worldwide Product Marketing, said the debut of Microsoft's new operating system gave many people good reason to switch to a Mac.
"Any user that reads all those steps is probably going to freak out," he said. "If you have to go through all that, why not just buy a Mac?"
In August, Apple debuted its own operating system upgrade, Snow Leopard. Priced at $29, Mac OS X 10.6 had sales twice as high as its predecessor, Leopard, in its first week, and four times better than Tiger. In addition, the new OS showed sales strength beyond its initial week, with sales dipping only 25 percent.
Apple Chief Operations Officer Tim Cook noted during his company's fourth-quarter earnings conference call that the sales of Snow Leopard exceeded their expectations. Upgrade sales of Snow Leopard were said to be more than double that of Leopard over its first five weeks of sale.
"That was much more than we planned," Cook said, "very pleasantly surprised."
According to the NPD Group, the first few days of Windows 7 sales far exceeded that of Windows Vista. Revenue came in 82 percent higher as well, a number lower than the sales increase due to early discounts and a lack of promotional activity for the operating system's 'Ultimate' version.
One promotion run by Microsoft pushed copies of Windows 7 for $29.99 for a valid .edu e-mail address, making the OS essentially the same price for students as Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 upgrade. That deal runs through Jan 3, 2010.
The top-selling upgrade was Windows 7 Home Premium, with an average selling price of $76. It was followed by Windows 7 Pro at $147, and then the Home Premium Family Pack 3 User Upgrade, which costs $149.
"Microsoft's program of early low-cost pre-sales, high visibility marketing and aggressive deals helped to make the Windows 7 software launch successful," said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD. "In a slow environment for packaged software, Windows 7 brought a large number of customers into the software aisles."
Total Windows PC sales were up 49 percent year-over-year, and 95 percent from the week prior to its debut. But compared to the launch of Windows Vista, those numbers lagged behind by a total of 6 percent. Vista also managed to create a 68 percent year-over-year increase, and a 170 percent boost over the week before its launch.
"A combination of factors impacted Windows 7 PC sales at the outset, but the trajectory of overall PC sales is very strong leading into the holiday season," Baker said. "Vista had a slight advantage at launch, as January traditionally has a bigger sales footprint than October. The other hurdle Windows 7 faced was sales of PCs with older operating systems (XP and Vista) were high, making up 20 percent of sales during the Windows 7 launch, compared to just 6 percent of older operating systems during Vista's launch week."
Microsoft had a marketing blitz surrounding the debut of Windows 7, opening its first retail store in Scottsdale, Ariz., selling giant seven-pattied Whoppers in Japan, and encouraging users to throw home parties to demonstrate the new OS. Apple fired back with its own marketing blitz, criticizing the difficult process of upgrading a Windows XP machine to Windows 7. Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president for Worldwide Product Marketing, said the debut of Microsoft's new operating system gave many people good reason to switch to a Mac.
"Any user that reads all those steps is probably going to freak out," he said. "If you have to go through all that, why not just buy a Mac?"
In August, Apple debuted its own operating system upgrade, Snow Leopard. Priced at $29, Mac OS X 10.6 had sales twice as high as its predecessor, Leopard, in its first week, and four times better than Tiger. In addition, the new OS showed sales strength beyond its initial week, with sales dipping only 25 percent.
Apple Chief Operations Officer Tim Cook noted during his company's fourth-quarter earnings conference call that the sales of Snow Leopard exceeded their expectations. Upgrade sales of Snow Leopard were said to be more than double that of Leopard over its first five weeks of sale.
"That was much more than we planned," Cook said, "very pleasantly surprised."
Comments
Of course this is the same store that didn't even mention the all new 27 inch iMac in their store ad last weekend.
how about comparing windows 7 with tomato fertilizer for the same price? sounds more appropriate...
I was in a Best Buy the week Windows 7 came out and it was not heavily hyped in the store at all. No posters, no T-Shirts, no popcorn. Nuthin. Very quiet launch.
Of course this is the same store that didn't even mention the all new 27 inch iMac in their store ad last weekend.
After release though it has been properly advertised, unlike Vista- and unlike Snow Leopard for that matter.
Nice to hear that MS is finally taking the effort to improve. This will motivate Apple to make better products. Consumers win!!!
I am with you on that one!
I was in a Best Buy the week Windows 7 came out and it was not heavily hyped in the store at all. No posters, no T-Shirts, no popcorn. Nuthin. Very quiet launch.
EXACTLY. Other than two very tame commercials with that little girl, Microsoft itself did very little to promote, and definitely did not "hype" Win 7 at all.
People who used Win7 (RC, RTM, whatever) were the ones who hyped the product. That in itself should say something.
I see Amazon has already started discounting. It couldn't happen to a nicer company and a more talented CEO.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc
It's no wonder, if 7 isn't going to spur many new PC sales, that M$ is generally charging a fortune for the upgrade (eg, $150 for a family Home 3-pak or $200 for "Pro"). That's maybe a good tactic for negotiating a $30 price with big business, but for SMB and Ma and Pa, it provides a nice incentive to switch.
I see Amazon has already started discounting. It couldn't happen to a nicer company and a more talented CEO.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc
Very few PC people upgrade their OS to begin with. They simply buy new computers as PCs are relatively inexpensive compared to Apple's "premium" hardware.
Anyways, just received my W7 disc in the mail yesterday. Installed with Fusion 3 and it works like a dream! (My magic mouse also runs flawlessly in Fusion btw.)
I'm surprised this article wasn't written by Prince. It has his signature all over it
Anyways, just received my W7 disc in the mail yesterday. Installed with Fusion 3 and it works like a dream! (My magic mouse also runs flawlessly in Fusion btw.)
What is it like (Windows 7)? It must be more intuitive than XP? I've never used Vista so I would be coming from that perspective.
I gotta say that Win7 is surprisngly good. I actually run it under parallels, and the thing is faster then XP (also in parallels). Vista was much slower and much more annoying, so I did not bother activating it and stuck with XP, now I am fairly confident I am going to delete XP from parallels as soon as I am sure all the Win Software I need can be brought over to it. That said OSX is still better in my view.
I got the $29.99 upgrade myself and installed it on a 1-year-old Dell laptop with 2.0Ghz Core2Duo and 1GB of RAM and it runs surprisingly well. I've still had no fewer than 6 updates (security and bug patches) in the week since installing it but it does seem to run well. I also had a few glitches here and there and it does still nag you a bit (but you can turn that off). All that said, I still highly prefer and love OS-X SL. Windows 7 just makes the occasional use of the PC that much more bearable.
Nice to hear that MS is finally taking the effort to improve. This will motivate Apple to make better products. Consumers win!!!
Agree. Consumes win. Someday back to the $1499 Mac or bettercm yet the midrange headkess mac, or same as iMac without screen and some slots, possible 8 core as mac is losing in rendering farms and servers even if end user has a mac. Too much bang fir the buck and mac desktop workstation are built with server parts, shouldntvhave to be that way.
I think if the courier is real and not oem and 100% Microsoft controlled, this could be a game changer. Most business/artist will want as wel as ebook and possible journalist, cad, musicians and if it's controlled 100 % Microsoft could equate total reliability similar to Apple products.
Peace
What is it like (Windows 7)? It must be more intuitive than XP? I've never used Vista so I would be coming from that perspective.
Actually, if you're used to XP then you'll be scratching your head in Control Panel trying to find where they put everything. Otherwise, it does seem fairly intuitive.
the fact that 29.99 is the same price a snow leopard qualifies this article to be apple insider news?
how about comparing windows 7 with tomato fertilizer for the same price? sounds more appropriate...
Todays macs run windows so most
Microsoft news is now relevant due to x86 chip technology bootcamp fusion parallels et-cetera.
Peace
Nice to hear that MS is finally taking the effort to improve. This will motivate Apple to make better products. Consumers win!!!
Apple made better products anyway.
While MS is busy sccraping the bottom end with the generic, undifferentiated box-assemblers, Apple is busy growing the Premium market and releasing game-changing products.
Apple doesn't seem to need anyone to push them, since Apple is pushing the entire industry forward. They did it during Vista, and they're doing it now in the Mobile space with no actual viable competition aside form another iPhone wannabe that falls short.
http://www.macdailynews.com/index.ph..._apple_iphone/
And Windows 7 sales exceed Vista?? No kidding. After 8 years of garbage operating systems inflicted on users by MS, the one that fixes Vista is actually selling more than Vista. Shocker. People are so sick of MS' operating system blunders that they'll take anything that's even marginally better. But we'll see what XP users are going to end up doing. That should be interesting.
Apple doesn't seem to need anyone to push them, since Apple is pushing the entire industry forward.
Well that's not true for computer hardware- at all . Where's Blu-ray? Where's quad laptops? Where's hybrid gloss/matte screens? HDMI? etc, etc. Apple computers just got SD slots for godsake! in 2009!
I liked the MacBook Pro so well, I bought a Mac Mini for my entertainment center. I still find a few things I like better in the Windows OS, but the stability of the MAC OS ( Using Snow Leopard ) is still far better than what Windows 7 offers. I still find video editing on the PC to be better ( iMovie is way too slow ). Games are still better on the PC ( mainly more options ). Networking still seems to be a little cleaner and more robust on the PC.
I do run XP and W7 in Fusion on my Macbook Pro, but only when I have to.
I still can't for the life of me understand why Apple decide to not have a delete and insert key on their keyboards, but I guess that is a small price to pay for an overall much better computing experience....
Windows 7 is going to be a strong competitor to OS X, but I probably won't go back to the PC....
What is it like (Windows 7)? It must be more intuitive than XP? I've never used Vista so I would be coming from that perspective.
I have to admit it is pretty nice. As someone else said, figuring out where certain things are is a task, but its pretty trivial. Plus I've had a lot of use out of the compatibility mode and it works like a dream. (You can open a program and have it pretend to be an older version of Windows.) Plus most programs that worked in Vista will work in 7, as we all know 7 is basically an update of Vista
I don't use it intensively, mainly just for MS Office as I find the OS X version sub-par. My fiance also has grading programs that require Windows, and they work even though they were built for XP. It doesn't hog RAM like its predecessor and is generally just more intuitive. I'd recommend it if you were looking into getting it.