Vista Delayed.... Again
The news that Vista slipped again left me yawning, which is why I went all day before commenting on it. After reading the Mini-Microsoft take though, I looked again. Here's the basic info:
Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system has been beset with another delay. After clearly pinpointing the holiday season of 2006 for launch, the company has now revised their primary launch period to 2007.
Jim Allchin, co-president of Microsoft's Platforms & Services Division, told analysts that the target time has been bumped to January 2007 for all consumer versions of Windows. He also said that editions aimed at business users would be available as early as November through volume licensing programs.
Like I said, I yawned at that this morning. But here's Mini-Microsoft on the case:
I was upset at missing the back-to-school market. Now we're missing the holiday sales market. All of those laptops and PCs are going to have XP on it. What percentage will upgrade to Vista? Well, I guess that's the little dream that I need to give up on. Vista's deployment is going to come from people buying CPUs with the OS pre-installed, not dancing down the CompUSA aisle as they clutch that boxed version of Vista to their loving chest. So not only did we miss last year's opportunity, we're missing this year's opportunity, too. With the convergence of high-tech media, this holiday season would have been an explosive nodal point to get Vista out for a compounded effect.
It's certainly a big loss of sales at a crucial time of year, and most of the people buying PC's then won't get on Vista for a few years - not until they buy another PC down the road.
So think about that - they delayed by a few weeks into January, supposedly to lock down some security issues. Hmm. It's March now. You're telling me that they can see a 2-4 week delay that clearly right now? I don't think so. I won't be at all surprised if this small delay turns into 6-9 months, or even more.
Comments
[Charles Miller] March 22, 2006 2:26:46.510
The real reason is that Apple recently announced that WWDC (and thus the revelation of what's in the next version of OS X) isn't going to take place until August, which means Microsoft need a few more weeks to, er, innovate from it.
</flamebait>
It doesn't matter
[Mark Leed] March 22, 2006 3:00:46.152
WPF will be backported, the linux desktop experiment failed, and OSX will always remain a niche tied to Jobs hardware fetish.
The real problem...
[Stephen Pair] March 22, 2006 8:34:34.173
The real issue for Microsoft is that it has very little reason to produce new versions of the OS. Consider that the vast majority of new OS licenses comes from the sale of new computers. Microsoft is going to get license revenue regardless of whether those new computers have XP or Vista installed on them (there are very few people that I know of that would transfer an existing license to a new computer purchased without an OS...if that's even allowed under the licensing terms). I think the days of people rushing out to buy the latest and greatest OS to install on their existing hardware are over...OSes just don't have that many compelling new features any more. Perhaps the biggest motivation for Microsoft these days to produce an new OS is to build DRM into it so that they can reap the financial windfall that is sure to come when they are able to securely deliver MPAA and RIAA content.