Vista performance 'steady'

Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows Vista, is steadily gaining market share, according to figures.

However, Apple's Leopard, the latest version of Mac OS X, has already made a mark on too, despite the fact that it was only launched less than two weeks ago.

Figures from NetApplications show that Vista's market share in October 2007 was 7.9 per cent, compared to 7.4 per cent for the previous month. Windows XP had dropped slightly, from 79.3 per cent to 79.1 per cent.

Operating systems based on Apple's Mac OS X had jumped from 3.2 per cent in September to 3.4 per cent in October. This took it beyond the market share for Windows 2000, XP's predecessor, which now only has a 3.1 per cent share.

"Vista has been making nice progress in gaining market share, but it's primarily come from older versions of Windows. Now, with Leopard out, the operating system market share battle will be very enticing to watch in the coming months," NetApplications said.

Microsoft recently decided to extend the lifetime of Windows XP, after pressure from customers and consumers.

However, it denied that this was because Vista was performing poorly in terms of sales.

"With more than 60 million licenses sold as of this summer, Windows Vista is on track to be the fastest-selling operating system in Microsoft's history," said Mike Nash of Microsoft.

But retailer PC World recently blamed an unenthusiastic customer reaction to the operating system for its own poor sales performance in the last quarter.

"The reduction in laptop stocks that arose out of disappointing sales of Vista related products and a changing sales mix have reduced gross margins by around 2 per cent in the computing division, impacting Group profits by around £20m in the first half," said Sir John Collins, chairman of Dixons Store Group, PC World's parent company.

www.microsoft.com
www.apple.com
www.netapplications.com
www.pcworld.co.uk

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