Vista to play second fiddle to XP until 2009: Gartner

By Stan Beer
Tuesday, 23 January 2007 05:18

IT Industry - Market

Windows XP will continue to reign supreme, while Vista will have scant market share until 2009, according to new projections from technology research group Gartner. According to Gartner, Vista is just catching up to Mac OS X in the consumer space but will make steady progress as the years roll by.

The Gartner projections released today predict that Vista will achieve a total operating system market share of just 12.3% in 2007, compared with a 77.1% share for Windows XP. Meanwhile the combined Windows legacy systems, including Windows 2000, ME, SE and others adds up to 6.8%, while Mac OS is projected to remain at 2.9% and Linux at 1.0%.

According to Gartner's figures, the vast majority of Vista market share this year (10.2%) will be generated by consumer purchases which suggests that the Vista market will be driven by sales of new PCs preloaded with Vista. Business use of Vista will account for just 2.1% operating system market share in 2007, according to Gartner.

The story is better for Vista in 2008. However, the new operating system will still lag well behind Windows XP. Gartner projects Vista to have a 35.2% market share, compared to a 58.9% share for Windows XP.

However, by 2009 Vista will be the predominant operating system with a 55.4% share compared to 40% for Windows XP, according to Gartner.

Interestingly, Gartner believes that both Mac OS and Linux will remain almost completely stagnant in the market place, with neither succeeding in growing their share in the market share.