Vista Sells 20 Million Wows, Says Microsoft

Microsoft issued a press release yesterday highlighting the "strong global sales" in the debut of Vista.  They claim sales exceeded 20 million licenses which is more then the 17 million for XP in the same period.  Not so fast say a lot of commentators.  There's a difference between licenses sold and licenses in the channel waiting to be sold to end users.  There are also questions as to whether the number of licenses had a somewhat artificial bump based on the number of coupons redeemed for Vista for machines sold with XP during the holidays.  Vista may have moved 20 million licenses, but not during the same comparable period five years ago.  There are also other details that affect the comparison such as the number of machines sold then and now (lots more) which affect the actual market penetration of Vista.  The announcement does nothing more than keep stockholders happy and maybe a few Wall Street analysts.

Read more on this in Playfuls, the CBC, the Channel Insider, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.