Vista: 20+ million sales in the first month & plenty more drivers

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 27 March 2007 23:54

Your IT - Entertainment

In case you’re wondering if the 20 million copies are sales of boxed editions of Vista – they are not, but this should not lessen the impact of 20 million copies of Vista, for those copies are full versions of Vista after all, with the evidence pointing to Windows Vista Home Premium being the most popular of all Vista editions sold so far.

Microsoft say that the 20+ million copies shipped so far “represent Windows Vista licenses sold to PC manufacturers, copies of upgrades and the full packaged product sold to retailers and upgrades ordered through the Windows Vista Express Upgrade program from January 30 to February 28”.

According to Microsoft’s, their PC-maker industry partners confirm consumer interest is strong. Neil Hand, vice president of Dell’s Consumer Product Group, and a copy responsible for tens of millions (and more) sales of Windows every year, said that: “Since the launch of Windows Vista, Dell consumer customers have overwhelmingly chosen premium versions of the operating system that enable them to have a richer experience with music, video, photography and other computing applications they choose. Customers' initial experience with Windows Vista has been quite positive, and we will continue to try to deliver the best customer experience possible.”

Mark Sanchez, vice president and general manager of consumer PCs at HP also chimed in to offer their own words of support, and took the chance to throw in a small ad for their upcoming technologies. Sanchez said that: “HP worked extensively with Microsoft to ensure that our Windows Vista-based PCs offer consumers our easiest, safest and most satisfying technology experience yet. We are pleased with the customer acceptance of our Windows Vista offerings, including our innovative new TouchSmart PC.”

Microsoft also point out that the activity around Vista is not just the operating system itself, but also “several new tools and programs [are] available to help customers get the best experience with Windows Vista. Windows Upgrade Advisor is a downloadable tool offered online at WindowsVista.com that helps consumers determine whether their Windows XP-based PCs can be upgraded to Windows Vista, and also helps choose the edition of Windows Vista that best meets their needs. The tool scans the computer and creates an easy-to-understand report of all known system, device and program-compatibility issues, and recommends ways to resolve them.”

Analysts also say that the impact of Vista will be far greater on the global IT economy, and the economy in general, than just on sales and profits for Microsoft. According to IDC, Vista will also help more than 1 million IT companies around the world (who sell hardware and software and/or sell IT products and services) will have their revenues and growth driven by Vista and related software and hardware sales and upgrades, while they also forecast more than 90 million copies of Vista being sold this year.

In the US alone, over 35 million computers are expected to be running one of the versions of Vista, meaning about US $4 billion in revenue for Microsoft, and ensuring that Windows stays one of Microsoft’s ultra reliable and strong cash generators, no doubt also driven by the strong anti-piracy technologies within Vista, although the 20+ million sales figure for Vista does make us wonder how many pirate copies of Vista have been installed on computers and hacked through the BIOS crack or have not yet undergone activation thanks to one or more of the activation postponing tricks floating around the Internet.

Further US figures for Windows Vista uptake and resulting employment suggest that 18% of IT employment in the first year of Vista’s launch will be directly related to Windows Vista itself. While a lot of this will be a shift of XP related IT employment to the new Vista platform, more than 60% of this growth is being directly attributed to Vista itself.

Of course lest you think that the Vista development cycle is over, nothing could be further from the truth. Microsoft continues working hard on releasing updated Vista compatible drivers, certifying more Vista compatible hardware and software, working on the SP1 release for Vista (due by year’s end) and in addition to whatever financial input Microsoft continues to pour into Vista, Microsoft partners are also expected to be investing more than US $10 billion by the end of the year to “ready their products and services around Windows Vista and then rolling them out”.

So, while Vista has exactly set the world totally alight with a ‘wow’ as truly felt for Apple’s upcoming iPhone, the world’s dominant operating system has passed its baptism of fire with a strong initial sales figure that look set to continue over the months ahead as Microsoft works to reach sales figures, to fend of Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5 and even companies like Google, and to ensure Windows stays on top of the operating system heap.

While it won’t please Mac or Linux fans (and the sometimes very excitable zealots within those ranks), who can rightly claim that Vista is still in its early stages and still dealing with driver and other issues, Windows Vista is clearly here to stay, with numbers that are set to only grow exponentially from now onwards into the future – until the next version of Windows comes along sometime in 2009, when the sales figures and the sales pitch will start all over again!