Microsoft: 88 Million Copies of Vista Shipped
Despite underwhelming consumers and being snubbed by enterprises,
Windows Vista's numbers keep growing.
Eric Lai, Computerworld
Friday, October 26, 2007 09:00 AM PDT

Despite underwhelming consumers and being snubbed by enterprises,
Windows Vista's numbers keep growing, with Microsoft Corp. saying
Thursday that it has now shipped *88 million copies* of the operating
system, almost double the number of copies of XP in the same amount of
time at its launch.

In late July, Microsoft said it had hit the 60 million shipment mark
with Vista.

Microsoft had previously said that it had shipped 20 million copies of
Vista in its first month and 40 million copies of Vista in the first 100
days.

Microsoft credited Vista with helping it beat Wall Street expectations
and raise financial projections for the rest of the year. The company
reported revenue of US$13.76 billion for the first quarter ended Sept.
30, up 27 percent from the same quarter in 2006.

Revenue in its client segment, which includes all consumer versions of
Windows, was $4.14 billion, edging out the $4.11 billion in revenue from
the Microsoft Business Division where Office is produced.

CFO Chris Liddell credited strong sales in emerging markets, due in part
to anti-piracy and legalization programs there.

Client revenues, however, did not top those of the first calendar
quarter this year, when Vista was officially launched. Revenues at that
time were $5.32 billion.

Three-quarters of the copies sold of Vista were higher-priced 'premium'
versions, compared to 59 percent of the copies of Windows -- primarily
XP -- available a year ago.

The 88 million figure mostly includes Vista-installed PCs bought by
consumers and small businesses, as well as packaged copies of Vista sold
in stores or online.

It does exclude the tens of millions of Windows corporate volume
licenses. There, many enterprises continue to hold off on deploying
Vista, acknowledged CFO Chris Liddell, though he expects them to start
deploying it when Vista Service Pack 1's arrival in the first quarter of
next year.

Nevertheless, revenue from companies renewing their volume licenses for
Windows, which gives them the right to upgrade to Vista, was up 27 percent.

Other highlights from the statistics:

-- Unit sales of Windows Server's premium enterprise edition were up 35
percent year-over-year;

-- A release candidate for Windows Server 2008 has been downloaded more
than one million times in its first month;

-- Unit and revenue growth of SQL Server were both up more than 15 percent;

-- Halo 3 generated $330 million in revenue;

-- Xbox 360 console unit sales increased 90 percent, driven by a price
cut in August and Halo 3-related demand;

-- Client revenues, including those for Vista, are expected to grow
62-64 percent year-over-year in the current fiscal Q2, or 13-14 percent
excluding certain revenue deferrals in the prior year;

-- Microsoft Business Division revenues, including those for Office, are
expected to grow 15-16 percent in Q2 after normalizing for impact of
technology guarantees and pre-shipment deferrals in the prior year;

-- A beta version of Office Communications Server has been downloaded
80,000 times;

-- There are 10,000 customers in the Customer Technical Preview (CTP)
program for PerformancePoint Server, its new business intelligence offering.