Microsoft gives a report on the sales of Windows Vista

Microsoft corporation gave a report the other day, which states that for the first two months of sales of the Windows OS Vista, 20 million copies of the product have been sold. However, analysts say Microsoft is cunning, and these figures say, but very little about the real rating of this OS among consumers. They point out in Microsoft, that in the first two months after the release of Windows XP in 2001, just a little less - 17 million copies were sold. “The demand for a product exceeds our expectations,” says Bill Mannion, Chief Marketing Analyst of Windows. On the other hand, according to the analysis of Gatner, since 2001, the PC market size in the world has almost doubled. And in point of view of Michael Silver, Vice-President of Gartner`s Research Department, the demand for Vista should have been much higher. According to the analysts, in 2001 51 million PC has been sold all over the world, and this year, Gartner expects sales of 96 million PCs. It should be recalled that since October last year, sellers and assemblers of PC has been actively distributing discount-flyers buyers for the new operating system, which has gone on sale at the end of January 2007. Microsoft said that 20 million copies sold include all the sold distributions kits - box versions, preinstalled on new PC`s, downloaded from Windows Marketplace, as well as updated from Windows XP. Michael Silver points out, that already after the release of Windows Vista producers and sellers of PCs sold between 12 and 15 million copies of Windows XP, what makes about 70-75% of the sold copies of Vista. In its turn, according to the consulting company NPD Group, if we compare demand in the first month of sales of Windows XP and Windows Vista, it will be clear that the demand for Vista is 56% less than for XP. In addition, analysts say that the sales would be even lower, if Microsoft did not set up direct contracts with many manufacturers and sellers of PCs, who either sell OS with a good discount or include it into the cost of PC. However, Microsoft did not provide statistics on the so-called net sales, that is, box distributives sold at retail. While the report shows that 80% of Vista copies were sold either with a discount or as update or as the addition to the new computer. Specialists say that there are several reasons for such low popularity of Vista. First, its high hardware requirements, second, the new architecture, which actually put paids to many popular programs, finally, the almost complete lack of advertising and news on the network, and on radio and on television. “So far, online and on television Apple videos are more popular, where Microsoft products are criticized, the corporation itself failed to find time and energy for good advertising”, says Swenson.