Microsoft fudging facts on Vista sales? What about Office 2007?

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 28 March 2007 05:15

Opinion and Analysis

Yesterday Microsoft, masters of marketing hype, issued a stunning press announcement about impressive early Vista sales and most of us took the bait and were reeled in hook, line and sinker. However, there are a few astute Windows market watchers who were able to see through the hype and inform us that sales of Vista are actually slower than early XP sales in 2001. Then of course, there is the question of Office 2007 sales, which Microsoft has not mentioned.

According to Joe Wilcox of Microsoft Watch and a couple of analysts, the 20 million Vista licenses figure actually reflects not copies sold to end users in February. In fact the figure is made up of a number of components dating backing to October 25 2006, including sales to OEMs and free upgrades for existing XP users who bought computers last year.

Analysts point out that there were not even 20 million PCs sold throughout the world in February.

In addition to this, Microsoft is claiming that it has sold Vista at more than twice the rate of initial XP sales of 17 million in the first two months. However, as Wilcox points out, this is a misleading comparison, given that users had access to the free upgrade to Vista option for more than four months.

Also take into account that almost double the amount of PCs are sold monthly in 2007 than were sold monthly in 2001 and the Vista sales ramp up does not look particularly impressive compared to the take-up of XP.

Microsoft launched Office 2007 at the same time as Vista. Unlike Vista, Office 2007 is not mandatory for new PCs. The silence has been deafening so far.

There is no doubt that Vista will eventually take over from XP as more new PCs enter the market. However, it is misleading to present Vista sales hype suggesting end users are falling over themselves to load a copy of Vista as reality. Many if not most end users still aren't sure whether their existing hardware and software is compatible with Vista. Many will wait until they buy a new PC.

The only true test of Microsoft claims of early sales success with Vista will come when the company presents its quarterly figures to investors. The market will also be watching to see how sales of Office 2007 is going, something that Microsoft has been very quiet about to date.