Stop the Noiz

140 Million Copies of Vista Sold (Yawn)

Frank Fox - 2008.05.09 - Tip Jar

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I think Philip Elmer-DeWitt at fortune, the author of 140 Million Copies of Vista Sold. How Does Leopard Compare?, needs to read my recent column, The Mac's 'Troubling Low' Market Share. If he would, at least he'd have some estimate of PC computer sales to expect through 2008 - around 310 million if there is a 15% increase over last year.

Looking at that, Bill Gates grand announcement of 140 million copies of Vista sold over the past 56 months doesn't mean much. Sure, every new PC has a copy of Vista installed (not really all of them - several companies are still selling XP but will be counting those copies as Vista sales), but at this rate only the new machines will have Vista while the installed base is sticking with XP for another year.

As our good friend Paul Thurrott likes to remind us Mac users, the installed base for PCs is growing each year. Microsoft has to sell heaps of software just to keep up. If they expect to make any penetration into their own installed base, they are going to have to do better than a measly 140 million units every 6 months. [Estimates are that only 12-14% of Windows users are on Vista, which has been out since November 8, 2006. By contrast, Apple estimates that 19% of Mac users are on Leopard, which was released in October 26, 2007. 14% over 18 months vs. 19% over 6 months - you can do the math. ed]

I say better luck in another 6 months, Bill. Just don't keep looking over your shoulder - that pile of XP is shrinking very fast.

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