Microsoft Corp. … said on Monday that it sold more than 20 million Windows Vista licenses in the first month since the operating system’s general debut on January 30.
The world’s biggest software maker said the pace of Vista adoption is at more than twice the rate of its predecessor, Windows XP, which had sold 17 million licenses after its first two months of release. [source]
Wow, sounds impressive, doesn’t it? Too bad it’s hooey. Sure, in raw numbers, Vista is trouncing XP. Unfortunately, when XP was released in 2001, there were far fewer computers in the world. Some publications claim that the number of computers in the world doubles every 6 years, although the pace could be faster as there were 150 million personnel computers in 1994 and 575 million in 2004, over 350% more in 10 years.
So, really, when Microsoft says sales for Vista are huge, they’re not huge enough. Conservatively, in 6 years, sales should be double (24 million) XP’s numbers, possibly as high as 350% more (59.5 million). Makes 20 million seem, well, like marketing.
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