Microsoft Vista Sales smack 88 Million, Up 47% since this July

Microsoft highlighted a number of customer migrations it says signify that users are gearing up to switch to the year-old OS.


Microsoft Tuesday assumed sales of Vista have hit 88 million and the company highlighted a figure of customer migrations it says signify that users are gearing up to change to the year-old OS in spite of recent surveys that say many are taking a careful approach.

Company officials say the ebb and flow of new contracts and expiring contracts means the overall number of volume licensing copies of Vista doesn’t alter radically from quarter to quarter.

In addition to the 88 million copies of Vista sold, Microsoft said 42 million PCs now have Vista licenses via amount licensing contracts signed by corporate users. Microsoft used the same 42 million number back in July when it discussed Vista uptake at its annual meeting for monetary analysts.

The Vista numbers were tabulated during Microsoft’s first fiscal quarter, which ended Sept. 30. The monetary results of that quarter were reported October. 25.

The numbers of copies sold represents nearly a 47% boost over the 60 million copies sold that was reported by Microsoft in July.

Vista shipped to corporate users on Nov. 30, 2006, after five years in development.

A recent survey by King Research, which was funded by systems management vendor Kace, showed that 90% of 962 IT professionals surveyed said they have concerns about migrating to Vista and more than half reported they have no plans to do so.

The respondents showed concerns that Vista would reduce stability and introduce too much complexity into their environments.

“Stability in general was repeatedly cited, as well as compatibility with the business software that would require to run on Vista,” says Diane Hagglund of King Research. “Cost was also cited as a concern by some respondents.”

The report showed the 43% of respondents have considered non-Windows operating systems, such as Linux and Macintosh, to avoid the Windows Vista migration.

A recent Forrester report showed that 52% of respondents have no plans to roll out Vista or don’t know at what time they might do it. The study shows 11% don’t plan to start a even out until 2009, and another 6% are waiting until 2010.

The study also shows that 88% of companies with 5,000 to 20,000 users have standardized on XP. In fact, stipulate for XP is still so strong that users forced Microsoft in September to extend XP’s availability another five months.

Microsoft’s continued hopefulness over Vista adoption is likely in part fueled by the fact that it plans to ship Vista Service Pack 1 around the end of February 2008.

Last week, it released an RC Preview of SP1 to 15,000 testers.

Service Pack 1 is historically a milestone many users wait for before they consider migrating to a new Microsoft operating system.

Source: networkworld.com