A new piece of analysis estimates 46% of new computers shipped with Vista between April and June. That will likely become a majority this quarter – though it’s still unclear exactly how many copies of Vista are actually in regular use.

The figures come from Joe Wilcox of Microsoft Watch and are a follow-up to Microsoft’s recent financial report conference call in which the firm proudly touted 40 million copies of Vista shipped in the last quarter, taking the total to 180 million.

Wilcox comes to his conclusions through some fairly sound-looking logic:

• 72 million PCs shipped worldwide during the period (according to analysts Gartner)
• Taking account of typical server sales, that makes 70 million desktops and laptops
• Around 80% of Vista sales are pre-installed on computers (the rest are sold as standalone boxed copies)
• 80% of 40 million is 32 million, which is 46% of 70 million

 

Wilcox applies similar calculations to find the percentage of new machines which have shipped with Vista since its launch. He reckons on 37% for the period from Vista’s launch to the end of March 2008, and 39% once you add in April-June this year. That’s a fairly slow trend upwards, though the quarterly figure should definitely shoot up past 50% now XP is ‘withdrawn’.

However, as Wilcox acknowledges, the value of these figures is severely limited by the way any machine with Vista on it is logged as a Vista sale, even if the user then ‘downgrades’ to XP.

It won’t be until this practice ends that we can get a really solid idea of how widely Vista is being used by new PC buyers – and while Microsoft says that day will come, it could be delayed if hardware manufacturers keep putting on pressure to allow downgrades.

Another possible way to measure use would be from the requests received by Microsoft through its automatic update system, which should show which edition of Windows people are actually running. However, these figures aren’t publicly available, and the chances are Microsoft will only release them if they tell the right story.

Related:

Microsoft offers XP downgrade option for Vista users

Windows Home Server ships August 27 in US

Gartner: Sticking to Windows XP until Windows 7 arrives is risky

Vista SP1 public beta due next week

Vista Ultimate still missing "extras"

Entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 9:52 am under Microsoft, Vista.  Print This Post

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