After reading many google searched articles I can't find any real numbers for Vista sales?

Based on TG thread count 8019 (Vista) vs. 393290 (XP) it would seem Vista still hasn't sold much at all. Also to back this up with Web Site hits where Vista hits are >1% it would appear that very few are actually using or buying into Vista.

So what's the real story? And why are the real numbers just not anywhere to be found. Apple iPhone sales were available within 1 week (AT&T activations confirm that), but Vista registrations seem to be "unknown" -- so how is this possible?

You're comparing apples and oranges. An iPhone is a real object that can be easily counted. Licenses are virtual, so the numbers are easily changed depending on what you mean by a sale. For example, many cellular phones count as a sale for Windows because its embedded, a purchase of a Novell user license counts as a sale due to the agreement they made last year with Novell, purchasing a PC may count as a sale even if you scrub the hard disk and install Linux, downloading some versions of Linux count as a sale (if they legally use Windows code for interoperability), etc. Anytime you talk about software licensing, you need to know what the numbers are related to because it is not obvious no matter which software vendor you're talking about. However, the numbers are out there: http://www.microsoft-watch.com/con [...] _sold.html
All of the business articles say that those sales numbers are at least credible from what they can gather.

Sure you can, it's called Activation! Both iPhone and Vista require activation which is valid data stored in a database -- just a matter of doing a count.

The article you posted is one I've read many times and if you read the article it goes on to say how meaningless those Microsoft numbers really are.

Microsoft knows the real number, they just don't wanna expose just how bad a flop Vista is -- they're banking that everyone will eventually have to upgrade to Vista. A bank I certainly would not make a deposit it.

Rob.

You can't use those numbers because reinstalls requires activation. You don't reinstall most iPhones (unless those phones are really messed up). With Vista, you now overcount every gamer who rebuilds their machine every 6 months. Also, if you work for a large organization, you may do what we do where I work and use a single licensed image over thousands of machines, only changing a few things in the image for each machine, but not activating each individual one. That's the reason those numbers are always blurry for all business software applications - they're virtual and not easily countable as real world objects. So, though you may not bank on those numbers, the industry is the only way to indicate how real those numbers are - and in this case, they are as close as they expect to get.

Sure you can, re-activations are tracked (and can be reduced or not included in the count) -- this is one approach Microsoft use to detect piracey (excessive re-activations) and part of Microsoft's "Geniuine Advantage" snooping software.

Gamers aren't installing Vista because there currently is no good reason to do so -- no DX10 titles and why take a performance hit with Vista's overhead. Gamers are still on WinXP for the most part so they really don't affect activations.

The industry does NOT know the numbers -- pretty much what most articles conclude with. But the fact that it is hard to find real numbers often means they ain't good numbers. If activations were high, you can bet Microsoft would be using those values (even if the included re-activations) because it would make the sales numbers seem better. But they don't, they uses licenses pre-sold going back to Oct last year -- maybe sold, but "Cleared" -- as in activations by consumers/business (read the entire article).

Businesses are the least likely to move to Vista right now -- cost justification to benefit ratio is just not there.

I have to agree with venon, MS must have a pretty accurate count of thier OS's out there, they are probably keeping that info internal for some reason. You could probably write off a certain % for piracy, but MS has to have this down pretty good.

So, it's agreed that the industry has no real proof one way or the other. You say that you believe that MS knows the numbers and MS has provided numbers. So, at this point, there is no reason to believe they are make believe, because there is no evidence either way. The only way to get close to the numbers are the financial sheets. So far, the industry analysts believe the numbers are pretty accurate. At this point, what factual evidence do we have that it isn't true?

pkellmey,

You probably don't have a good understanding of "financials" -- accountants and accounting and what Microsoft disclose has been deregulated -- how they want to present the "numbers" is really up to them. Did you read the entire article? The "facts" do exist in terms of activations -- but those numbers are apparently being closely guarded and there are no federal or state requirements that would force Microsoft to disclose those numbers. In fact, if you follow any politics, you'll notice that there are some heavy lobbists trying to actively reduce the amount of information that corporations must disclose to public record and GWB in his infinite stupidity thinks this is a good thing.

The very reason these numbers (activations) are NOT being disclosed and Microsoft is using some bizarre pre-sales license and OEM pre-install method of counting copies sold and not using "cleared" sales is very dubious. That's like making 20,000,000 mini-vans and distributing them to dealers and calling it 20,000,000 sold -- BUT the dealers only sell 100,000 to real consumers. This is how Microsoft are accounting the financials -- this is a very dubious way to realize sales and is done to artificially inflate the numbers.

If you simply look at this site for example and compare Vista threads to XP thread 8,000+ Vista vs. 300,000+ WinXP -- that's a pretty good indication of real world interest/sales.

If that isn't enough fact for you, high volume web sites track hits by OS type -- they're reporting Vista hits at <1% compared to WinXP which is around 70+%. So whatever numbers Microsoft are using don't match up with real statistic in the real world.

The sales numbers Microsoft are claiming go back to Sep/Oct (RTM) so if you use that as the release time frame, we're almost 1 year into Vista.

The bottom line, the real numbers do exist, Microsoft aren't disclosing them, why? Are they really that bad?

I was looking for a little more fact based evidence rather than what a user on this forum may/may not be using. You can't provide any. There are many reports on the Internet with the license sales numbers other than that single one. However, you've already decided you don't like the numbers so you'll ignore them. Very little point in continuing the discussion at that point because you've already convinced yourself without any facts.

Ok, go to other forums -- you'll find similar results. A user?? I think TG has more than one user? Based on the number of ads one finds on TG they must have a good hit count cause they attract a lot of advertisers.

There are many articles, they all say about the same.

And I've pointed out why (which is in accordance with what others have pointed out in those articles) the numbers being tossed out are worthless.

So why not use "activations"? You keep avoiding this question - why?

You really haven't presented anything other than you don't want to know the real facts or your saying that we'll never know the real facts. The real facts exist -- sorry that you don't want accept them.

Why do you care?

If you don't like Vista and have no plans to purchase it... why is it so critical for you to know the exact number of copies sold? Would that somehow influence your decision? Probably not, and it certainly won't affect my decision either.

MS is not the only company to count sales to dealers as total number of units sold... almost every company does it. Once the product is sold to a dealer / distributer / OEM, MS receives no other money when the product is sold to the end-user. If Vista was really selling as badly as you believe, then the dealers / distributers / OEMs wouldn't be making as many purchases, now would they? Makes no sense to stock up on software that isn't going to sell.

But I digress. I couldn't care less about how many copies of Vista have been sold to end-users... and I can't imagine why you care either. Let MS lie... it will only come back to bite them in the ass later... and then you can have a good laugh at their expense.

If the OS is not being adopted, then companies (such as mine) will not code software specific to it because there aren't enough consumers to sell the software to.

Microsoft discount Vista to OEM considerably -- certainly A LOT more than WinXP. So if OEM can charge the for this OS but retain a higher profit margin, the OEM will favor selling Vista.

Dell (and others) went back to selling WinXP pre-installed because consumers didn't want Vista or at the very least wanted a choice.

But again, what is wrong with reporting "Activations" -- why all the mystery around the real sales numbers, why try to dupe "market analysts"? If Vista is selling as good as you think it is, then why not report activations?

But again, why are you ignoring the obvious facts in front of you -- the Vista thread count at TG and many other sites? I'm not making these numbers up, just go look for yourself -- easy enough to do.

MS isn't in a lie, they are just doing their best to overstate by using creative accounting -- lots of companies do this, but the fact that Micrsoft are resorting to these methods would indicate a problem.

How were XP's sales upon release? How well was it selling prior to SP1? Was it that much better than Vista is now?

There's no need to code software specifically to Vista... almost anything that will run on XP will run on Vista. Of course, 64-bit is another story entirely... but even Vista x64 is able to run a lot of 32-bit software as well.

I don't doubt that this has been MS's lowest adoption rate in quite some time... however, after SP1 is released, I believe that will start to turn around. Personally, I'm waiting for a new computer before I make the switch... so that's why I haven't bought it yet.