Microsoft’s Vista fails to stop Apple Mac OS popularity
Microsoft has on a number of occasions reported that Vista sales are strong, higher than expected, and that Vista is doing much better than XP did when it was launched. What it never talks about is how Vista is affecting the Apple Mac OS market. There certainly seems to be evidence that the Macintosh is only getting more popular, despite the launch of Vista.
Back in March, Microsoft announced that Vista sales were breaking records, with over 20 million licenses sold in its first month, a rate that was double of its predecessor, Windows XP. And in April, when Microsoft announced record quarterly revenues of $14.4 billion, the company credited better-than-expected sales of Vista for the improvement.
Refering to the recent quarterly report, Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said Vista beat internal forecasts by $300 million to $400 million, and Office 2007 sales were $200 million better than expected.
Vista is also expected to out perform Windows 2000 which was installed on 2.6 percent of all business computers after a year on the market. Gartner predicts that Windows Vista will be installed on 4.2 percent of all business computers by the end of 2007. IDC has estimated the number at 5 percent.
If you believe Microsoft, Vista is a rising star.
In April, Apple said it sold a record 1.52 million Macs in the quarter that Vista debuted. Apple executives boasted that Macs were “clearly gaining market share” as sales for the quarter grew three times faster than the over all worldwide computer market, up 10.9 percent, according to research firm IDC.
Another fact worth mentioning is the number of people surfing the Web using a Mac has doubled in the past eight months. Measurements from WebSideStory and rival Net Applications put Apple’s Mac OS X at close to or just over 6 per cent of all machines in the US that connected to the web last month.
Since August, the percentage of online Macs running Apple’s operating system has climbed from the long-flat 3 per cent to 5.6 per cent, according to Geoff Johnston, an analyst at WebSideStory. Net Applications data, which splits the Mac’s share between computers running the PowerPC version of Mac OS and those with an Intel edition of the operating system, pegged the total share at 6.2 per cent for April.
“Mac has almost doubled,” Johnston said, “so you know they’re selling a butt load.”
Microsoft may have build its best-ever OS, and sure we can expect that Vista sales will continue to be stronger than its predecessors. But it’s all doing is selling to the converted.
There seems to be ample evidence that Vista is doing nothing to dampen the Macintosh revival, with the new version of Max OS, Leopard, almost upon us, this is unlikely to change in the near future.
See the related story – Apple fails to exploit Vista’s shortcomings with delayed Leopard release.
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May 15th, 2007
There is no doubt, MSFT will move lots of Vista– to those PC makers (other than Dell) who are forcing it on their customers. But make no mistake: it is just warmed-over XP, with CPU-sucking eye-candy thrown in. It isn’t secure; it isn’t “friendly”; most of all, it still isn’t UNIX-based, and will not multitask nearly as well as Mac or LINUX.
May 15th, 2007
Apple’s share of the operating systems market is ZERO. It is a market that Apple does not participate in.
Operating systems are purchased by gadget makers, hobbyist hardware builders, and corporate IT departments that build their own systems.
Apple, a gadget maker, is a potential operating system CUSTOMER but instead writes its own.
It’s only the tech and financial press that thinks Apple is in the same business as Microsoft instead of the same business as Dell.
May 15th, 2007
Microsoft’s Vista fails to stop Apple Mac OS popularity
Microsoft has on a number of occasions reported that Vista sales are strong, higher than expected, and that Vista is doing much better than XP did when it was launched. What it never talks about is how Vista is affecting the Apple Mac OS market. There ce
May 15th, 2007
NEUROTIC Nomad—did your mother give you that name?
May 15th, 2007
Neurotic Nomad, Are you for real? Are there people out there that actually think this? Astounding!! Your level of ’self deception’ reaches heights that are well beyond what what one typically reads on the web.
May 15th, 2007
Neurotic Nomad, could you please enumerate on the few companies in the IT market that are bigger than Apple ? You will fine only a few.
No, Not Dell, Not GateWay, Not …, Apple has grown into the league of Intel, HP and is growing much faster than others.
You should really update your oldfashioned view of the world.
Reality is subject to change without notice
May 15th, 2007
Neurotic Nomad is trying to express an interesting idea, but is doing it badly.
He’s trying to point out that Apple is not in direct competition with Microsoft. Apple is not quite in direct competition with Dell either, but the similarities are closer.
Here’s the point: Apple does not make an OS product to sell to the general public the way Microsoft does. The OS is sold only to existing Mac users. The purpose of the OS is to sell computers.
Apple makes a hardware/software combination, which is entirely dissimilar from what Microsoft does, and somewhat dissimilar from what Dell does.
The better metric to measure the success of the Mac is the number of users, rather than market share. And preferably, we should measure the number of users in given market segments (corporate, home, creative, etc.) since Apple really doesn’t make an effort to compete in some of those segments.
However, for PR purposes, Mac OS versus Windows is easier to grasp and more compelling.
May 15th, 2007
About those “record” Vista sales I’ve wondered: is the OEM sale booked when the computer is sold or when the computer is built and Vista is loaded? If the latter, the “record” would really be just a one-time surge to load up the pipeline.
May 15th, 2007
[...] Mais detalhes no artigo completo de Francia. [...]
May 15th, 2007
Jim Royal
These points may be, however as has been seen many, many times Microsoft certainly sees Apple as a competitor. Or at the very least the figureheads of MS think so such as Gates and Balmer. One need only look back on the history between MS and Apple to see that they do compete and that MS tried quite hard to squish Apple more than once. And I could have sworn that Dell had made similar impressions over the past several years. So while they technically don’t compete in exactly the same way it’s a pretty minor point. Apple does both Software and Hardware, MS does the software and Dell does the hardware. I really feel the odd statement by Neurotic Nomad even with your far better explanation still rubs of FUD and deception.
May 15th, 2007
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May 16th, 2007
I do have to laugh every time I see the “Vista sellling at 2x XP” claim, since the PC Market is twice as big as it was when XP debuted: simple math says that you have to sell 2x as much just to reach the same *percentage* of your base. Its a useful statistic for measuring how much money you’re making, but not really a good one for how well your product is being received by your customers.
-hh
May 16th, 2007
Mathue:
Perhaps it would help to think of it like this:
I can walk down the street and buy a boxed copy of Vista. I can install it on a generic PC. I will not find boxed copies of Mac OS X, nor can I install it on just any PC.
I can buy Dell hardware with Vista pre-installed. I can also buy a Macintosh with OS X pre-installed.
Which of these seem more similar?
May 16th, 2007
Looking at the data in a different light…
Okay, let’s assume that Mr. Bill is being truthful in that 40 million people are *using* Vista. As per the web marketshare statistics, the Mac still is a slightly larger wedge.
Why gosh! That means that there must be more Mac users than previously suspected. Like over 40 million of them (roughly double).
Similarly, if 40+ million is 6.2%, that means that the total installed base of Personal Computers currently in use is…its straightforward math folks…roughly 650 million. Golly.
-hh
May 16th, 2007
The 40 millions copies of Vista sold is the latest of the many number of occasions Micorsoft reported that Vista sales are strong and higher than expected. But like I said, MS never talks about is how Vista is affecting the Apple Mac OS market. The fact remains solid, Microsoft’s Vista fails to stop Apple Mac OS growing popularity.
May 16th, 2007
[...] Apple fails to exploit Vista’s shortcomings with delayed Leopard release The launch of a new version of Max OS, codenamed Leopard, off the back of average Vista sales, looked like an opportunity for Apple to finally attract more consumers and businesses to the Mac world. Unfortunately, it now seems that by delaying the release of Leopard release, Apple may have squandered any potential advantage offered by Vista ’s struggle to gain momentum. While Microsoft has on a number of occasions reported that Vista sales are strong, higher than expected, and that Vista is doing much better than XP did when it was launched, there seems to be strong evidence that Vista is struggling to gain momentum in corporate world. InformationWeek Research, in a recently conducted survey, said, “You have to read the fine print to get the full, and less impressive, picture” of Vista ’s deployment rate on businesses. The survey, completed on online by 612 business technology professionals in March and April, found that 25% of the respondents had already begun deployment of Vista, and among those early adopters, 91% have installed Vista on 10% or fewer of their PCs. In addition to the 25% of survey respondents who have already begun the move, only 17% plan to install Vista over the next 12 months. For 58% of respondents, Vista is more than a year away or not on their to-do list at all. Why aren’t they moving faster? One key finding of the survey was that Vista is falling short of expectations among a surprisingly high percentage (46%) of business technology pros. Only 19% said it’s meeting expectations, while an oddball 1% grade Vista as “exceeding expectations”. Another survey, conducted by CDW Corporation, found that “the top five reasons for not adopting Vista were the expectation of bugs in the first release, satisfaction with a current operating system, unclear benefits from upgrading, concerns about hardware requirements, and lack of IT staff.” This survey was conducted among businesses, state/local government agencies, K-12 education and higher-education institutions — 753 IT decision makers responded. Rather than try to exploit Vista ’s shortcomings by getting Leopard OS X out on time, Apple said it would delay the release of its new operating system because it had to devote more resources to the iPhone. Some commentators are not convinced with the reasons given for the delay. Some say Apple delayed the next generation of Mac OS X to give developers a head start on porting existing software, as well as developing new software for the new user interface. Others say that Apple delayed Leopard so that it would not compete with the iPhone for media attention. But Apple CEO Steve Jobs says that while the decision to delay Leopard is not popular with some people, he believes it was the right one to make. Perhaps Apple was right to delay Leopard. But such a delay gives its archrival Microsoft extra time to sort Vista’s shortcomings, and to convince computer buyers that Vista is the best option. It seems that Apple has squandered any potential advantage offered by Vista ’s shortcomings. See the related story – Microsoft’s Vista fails to stop Apple Mac OS popularity. Source:VISTA.BLORGE.com » Blog Archive » Apple fails to exploit Vista’s shortcomings with delayed Leopard release [...]
June 21st, 2007
I think something most of you forget to remember when talking about the supposed competition between Mirosoft and Apple, in `97 Microsoft bailed Apple out. Apple has a specialty following, generally 18 to 25 and 45 to 65, Microsoft generally targets more of a business market. In the end the end user is shafted completely, because business dictates you have to us MS, yet Apple has the better UI without the support of companies.
Also, Apple completely controls and retains to it’s OS, just like it’s hardware. Generally if you put the equivalent of the current mac besides it’s PC equivalent, the PC is much cheaper, this is why Apple will never see real market share.