Vista does not go over well in China, blame the pirates
By Jonathan Schlaffer
Microsoft has been advertising Vista like crazy with the “Wow Starts Now†campaign, while they like to tout sales of 20 million copies, actual installations and copies in the hands of consumers are far less than that. I’m not going to rehash that here as it has been discussed before.
It seems the rest of the world is giving Vista a lukewarm reception as well, especially in countries where piracy is its own business. According to Newlaunches Microsoft sold a grand total of 244 genuine Vista licenses in China. This is a country where you can pick up a pirated version of Vista for as little as $1.
For those of us in the US, it is just easier not to mention perfectly legal to buy an OEM copy of Vista for $112. I don’t know if Microsoft is responsible for the price drop or if the online stores have dropped prices by themselves. $112 for a copy of Vista Home Premium is about as good a deal as you can get.
Microsoft was probably hoping to sell more legitimate copies in China since they did have a 421 meter high ad thrown up on Jin Mao tower in Shanghai. The question remains why Microsoft would spend so much on advertising when they know trying to sell a product in a country with high rates of software piracy is not the easiest thing to do.
I have an idea for Microsoft. Maybe employees working there could go around collecting sales figures from all the software pirate dealers and count the sales for Vista as their own, that way it looks better on paper for the company. Just a suggestion since it seems just about any tactic will be used to boost Vista sales figures.
I wouldn’t trust these copies of Vista to work as promised or as well as a genuine copy and sadly that information is not available.
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Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
April 20th, 2007
[…] Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer said that Citigroup plans to upgrade 500,000 PCs to Vista in the next 13 to 14 months according to a report coming out of ComputerWorld. He could certainly use the good news right about now what with Vista’s failure in both the US and China where Microsoft sold only 244 genuine copies. […]
April 20th, 2007
saying “$112 for a copy of Vista Home Premium is about as good a deal as you can get.” is like saying drilling a hole in your head to get more air to your brain is “as good as it gets” which is what you would probably need (another hole in your head) to convince you to desire a bloated - dos required 360kb to boot and run- win95 15mb - vista requires 3 terrabytes if you want all the Bells & Whistles - operating system that doesn’t even have 3rd party vendor support, ie drivers and won’t run your existing software and is slower less secure. Time to dump your Citibank stock, there management is obviously insane.
April 22nd, 2007
How is that much worse than paying $140 for Windows XP Professional, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116059
In that case you SAVE money provided you don’t need hardware upgrades. I didn’t but I upgrade my processor and graphics card anyway.
April 24th, 2007
[…] After many reports were floating around that Microsoft only sold 244 copies of Vista in China, it is saying “not so fast.†It is now being reported by the propaganda machine in Redmond that Vista has sold many more than 244 copies and the sales figures for Vista in China and the globe are “pleasing.†As reported by MacNN. […]
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