Vista: 150 Million Shipped
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News Brief. A month after the last numbers update, Microsoft ships 10 million more Windows Vista licenses. |
Microsoft revealed that 140 million licenses shipped during its fiscal 2008 third-quarter earnings announcement in late April. This evening, during the D Conference in Carlsbad, Calif., Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer revealed the 150 million figure. I'm here at the opening night event, which is still underway as I post. This year's conference, the sixth, is simply called D6.
Steve discussed the figure during some pressing questions about Windows Vista. D Conference co-organizer Walt Mossberg asked if the operating system was a failure, or even a mistake.
"Vista's not a failure and it's not a mistake," Steve said. He said that half of enterprises buying PCs get them with Vista, even if they later downgrade. He noted that they could choose Windows XP from the start.
Walt turned the questioning to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, asking if he was disappointed by Windows Vista.
Bill said that no Microsoft operating system, not even Windows 95, was "100 percent of what I wanted."
He continued: "We have a culture where we need to do better." Bill then joked that Vista has given Microsoft lots of opportunity to practice the philosophy.
"There are plenty of lessons out of Vista," Bill later conceded.
Steve acknowledged that Microsoft had made some sacrifices for the benefit of security. Yes, Microsoft might do some things differently in hindsight. Because of some decisions made by Microsoft, Vista was "jarring to the ecosystem," he conceded. To Microsoft's surprise, research showed that the most jarring aspect was changes made to the Windows user interface.
Related Posts:
- The Steve and Bill Show, Microsoft Watch, May 27, 2008
- Are These Windows Transparent or Translucent?, Microsoft Watch, May 27, 2008
- Vista's Bad Rap and the Adoption Gap, Microsoft Watch, April 16, 2008
- Broken Windows Can't Be Fixed, Microsoft Watch, April 11, 2008
- 10 Ways Microsoft Can Make Windows 7 Lucky, Microsoft Watch, March 21, 2008
- Windows Seven: We're Hiring!, Microsoft Watch, Jan. 31, 2008
- Windows Seven: Enough Already, Microsoft Watch, Jan. 25, 2008
- Is Seven Renegade, Guerrilla Marketer or Fake?, Microsoft Watch, Jan. 13, 2008
- Why 'Seven' and Not SP1?, Microsoft Watch, July 24, 2007
Comments (10)
Microsoft's investment in security with UAC in particular is paying off, there was a research done the other day which showed that UAC did a good job of preventing root kits from infiltrating Windows Vista systems.
Posted by Andre Da Costa | May 28, 2008 12:35 AM
Windows Genuine Advantage is also doing a good job of combating piracy. It follows that the slower rate of increase of Windows sales relative to the growing PC market doesn't mean that people are installing unlicensed copies of Windows--they really are moving to other operating systems!
Posted by Lawrence D'Oliveiro | May 28, 2008 3:05 AM
Vista is a huge improvement for my small company. It made such a positive difference to those of us getting it on new computers - that we ended up buying a few retail licenses for the existing computers too.
Posted by s | May 28, 2008 5:54 AM
Of course the question is how many of those 150 million were either new PCs that were promptly re-imaged with XP or for corporate licenses where again downgrade rights were used to install XP.
Posted by Robert Aitchison | May 28, 2008 1:32 PM
Lawrence,
Are you referring to the 10 million copies of OSX sold during the same period?
Posted by roger | May 28, 2008 2:44 PM
Andre Da Costa says:
"Microsoft's investment in security with UAC in particular is paying off,"
Really????
http://www.osweekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2781&Itemid=449
From the link:
"Windows Users Need to Make Some Tough Choices. In the past, I have shared some of my thoughts for best approaches to locking down a Windows box. Using solutions like suDown and not running as an administrator all the time by itself would mean that the user is, by and large, quite safe in comparison to even the most locked down use of the Vista UAC. Yes, UAC means you are still running as administrator, and this is a flawed way of going about things."
What this means is you are better off running as a limited user account from XP than running UAC in Vista.
Posted by sam | May 28, 2008 9:32 PM
Vista: 150 Million Shipped - 125 Million upgraded to XP. I'm pretty sure a significant number of people reformatted with XP but thanks to Ballmer's shove it down your throat policy we'll never get an accurate reading of how many people upgraded to XP - how many people moved to OSX or Linux because Vista was being forced upon many victims of PC purchases.
Is my 125 million estimate accurate? Hard to say it could be 1 million - could be 149 million but since Ballmer is foisting bogus figures upon us - why shouldn't I?
Posted by boe | May 29, 2008 3:06 AM
All the units I purchased in the past two years had Vista with an "upgrade" to XP. So is Bellmer the George Bush of Microsoft or the Karl Rove? GRRRRRRRRRRRR
Posted by Gregg Harcus | May 29, 2008 4:02 PM
My company buys the machine with vista and reimages as it is cheaper than buying with the downgrade option or buying one with xp preinstalled (we would reimage anyway) being a major WW pharma we just made the announcement we would pass on vista completely and wait for Windows 7. Also that vista is not welcome on the network. not even for the execs.
and I like the downgrade language - this is all over the magazines so I suspect it is the official word that must be used per microsoft- but it really is an upgrade to move back to XP
p
Posted by Paul | May 30, 2008 7:56 AM
150 mil licenses shipped. impressive number. how many licenses are actually being used vs. downgraded to XP or retail boxes gathering dust on store shelves, while customers can't answer the question "why should I buy a bloated, slow, buggy piece of junk like Fista when XP works just fine?"
Posted by Al | May 30, 2008 5:34 PM