/ 27 July 2007

Microsoft brushes off Vista ‘disappointment’

”The whole industry is disappointed with Windows Vista.” That’s what Gianfranco Lanci, the Italian president and CEO of Acer, Taiwan’s biggest computer company, told the German edition of the Financial Times on Monday. ”Also, that won’t change in the second half-year,” he added.

Lanci’s main complaint is that people aren’t buying new PCs to run Vista, and that it has had less of an effect on sales than previous versions of Windows.

But Acer isn’t suffering too badly. Gartner’s research figures show that PC sales in the second quarter of this year were up 11,7% on last year, which is better than the 10,6% growth it predicted. Acer’s worldwide PC shipments did even better, growing by 54,2% to 4,4-million units. In Europe, where it is the third-largest supplier, Acer grew by 36% in a market that increased by 13,5%, while in the United States, Acer’s shipments grew by 163,9%, according to Gartner.

Microsoft also remains bullish. The local subsidiary told the Financial Times that Vista was a great success in Germany, while Microsoft UK says of its global figures: ”Demand is strong and we’re pleased with the response to Windows Vista so far. For instance, we sold 20-million copies in the first month of availability — a record — and nearly 40-million as of mid-May.”

However, following last week’s results, Microsoft chief financial officer Chris Liddell said that, over the next year, he was budgeting for more sales of Windows XP than previously expected.

”We changed it from 85% to 78% [for Vista]. Now, it’s a lower number, but it’s still a very high number overall from our perspective, so 78% Vista mix in terms of sales next year.”

This doesn’t make much difference to Microsoft. It only reduces its income insofar as Vista buyers are slightly more likely to buy a more expensive version of Vista.

Indeed, by providing free downloads of things such as Microsoft.net 3.0, Internet Explorer 7 and Silverlight, Microsoft has provided some of Vista’s benefits to about 550-million XP users, reducing their need to upgrade.

And there are several new versions of Windows on the way. Next month will see the arrival of Windows Home Server, providing automatic back-ups for home and small business users. This should be followed by a beta test version of Windows Vista Service Pack 1, though the final code may not appear until next year.

Microsoft has also scheduled the release of Windows Server 2008 for early next year. The new version is already being used on Microsoft.com as a form of extreme stress testing. And following that is Windows 7, the next version of Vista, which has been thumbnailed in for 2010. Sorry, no more fancy codenames.

Windows is now under the control of a new boss, Steven Sinofsky. He’s famous for shipping numerous versions of Microsoft Office with impressive regularity and lack of fuss. If you liked Office 10, Office 11 and Office 12 then you could well like Windows 7, 8 and 9. — Guardian Unlimited Â