Legal Research

Vista, We Hardly Knew Ye

Last week Microsoft released its 1Q earning figures for July-September 2008.  Fifteen billion in revenue.  Office and server software, both up 20% or more.  Woo hoo!  Take that, stupid Steve Jobs and your annoying commercials.

Um … not so fast: Windows revenue was up only 2%, and income was down 4%.  One of the cash cows ain’t giving milk the way she used to.

People aren’t “upgrading” to Vista.  Corporations, especially.  So in the battle for our hearts and minds, Microsoft has decided to declare victory for Vista and withdraw.  CEO Steve Ballmer said that while Vista’s good — “really, it is, I mean it, we have 180 million happy users” — the new version of Windows, Windows 7, will be “a lot better.”

And Microsoft is moving on.  Joe Wilcox of Microsoft Watch tells an interesting story.  Of the 195 sessions at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference this week, 22 cover Windows 7.  None are about Windows Vista at all.  I checked, he’s right.  In fact, the only mention of Vista I could find was in the description for the “Windows 7: Best Practices for Developing for Windows Standard User” session.

Looks like one of those Apple commercials has more than a grain of truth in it.

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on October 27, 2008 (boomark / email).