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Windows Vista, the much touted and hyped operating system from Microsoft that was long over due, is now out in the market for more than 2 months. Microsoft announced a month back that Vista sales-licenses sold to PC manufacturers, copies sold to retailers. and upgrades ordered through the Windows Vista Express Upgrade program-have exceeded 20 million copies. According to Bill Veghte, corporate vice president of Windows Business Group at Microsoft:

This represents a “more than doubling” of the initial pace of Windows XP sales, which reached only 17 million in January 2002, after two months on the market.
We are encouraged to see such a positive consumer response to Windows Vista right out of the gate

The folks at Ars Technica were quick to point out on this that, while Microsoft has really sold twice as many copies of Windows Vista, than those of Windows XP, however the growth is a merely a result of more Computers being sold. In the first quarter of 2002, just over 31 million PCs were sold, as compared to 65 million PCs sold in the last quarter of 2006.

In the light of this the statements of Bill Veghte could be interpreted as:

Thank to the double-rate increase in PC sales and the fact that consumers are stuck with us if they want to buy a new computer because, guess what, we still monopolize all the operating system bundling in the industry.

Due to dismal upgradation rate of Windows XP users, the execs from the OEM’s are getting upset at Microsoft. They were lead to believe that the immense demand for Windows Vista will ultimately increase demand for new PCs, because it is more resource intensive. According to Gianfranco Lanci Acer’s president “PC makers are really not counting on Vista to drive high demands for the industry”. Similarly Samsung Electronics has commented that “DRAM demand has not matched anyone’s predictions based on Vista’s now failed projections, something that is being echoed by the industry as a whole.”

As if these figures were not enough to make Steve Ballmer through chairs, reports are pouring in that Microsoft has just sold 244 registered copies of Windows Vista in China in two weeks (Jan 19 to Feb 2), thanks to rampant software piracy-the pirated versions of the OS are available for $1 on the streets. This extra ordinary was made possible by spending millions of dollars on advertising its next generation OS in China. In fact Microsoft threw up the biggest Windows Vista Ad on the 421 meter high Jin Mao tower in Shanghai China.