Wednesday, May 16, 2007

'Microsoft Sold' is a misnomer

Once again Microsoft touts the 40 Million Vista sold number.

But what does 'sold' mean in this context? Does anyone really buy Microsoft's OS?

Almost never. It just comes pre-installed on the new machine you buy. This is what being a monopoly does for a company. You don't have to sell anything. You just strong-arm the vendors of computers to include Vista, and forbid by contract the sale of XP, and so 'sales' of Vista skyrocket.

So what do the numbers actually indicate? That Microsoft has perfected their contracts to the point that the computer vendor have no wiggle room. XP was adopted more slowly because cautions customers had a choice.

Q1 2007 worldwide PC sales were 62 Million units. Microsoft 'sold' 40 million Vista. That's only 2/3 of the world PC sales, so maybe Microsoft needs to tighten it's legal grip even harder. It would be nice to know what OS was on the other 20 Million units. XP? Linux? Windows 98? Pirated Vista?

The truly interesting news is that Dell is allowing XP on some boxes due to customer demand.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=438
http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=12669 (11 Million / .176 = 62 Million)

TF

2 comments:

Unknown said...
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Unknown said...

Here are some that Microsoft didn't sell.

Companies selling pre-installed desktop Linux.

lxer.com/module/forums/t/23168
lxer.com/module/db/index.php?dbn=14