HP: Windows XP accounts for majority of Vista sales

 

Gallery

By Barry Collins

Posted on 29 Jul 2008 at 11:58

HP has undermined Microsoft's claims of healthy Vista sales by claiming that the majority of Vista licences are sold with machines pre-loaded with Windows XP.

Microsoft reacted furiously to claims from Forrester research that businesses are rejecting Vista earlier this week.

Now, HP is claiming that the Vista downgrade rights are putting a false spin on the operating system's sales figures.

"From the 30th of June, we have no longer been able to ship a PC with a XP licence," says Jane Bradburn, market development manager for commercial notebooks for HP Australia, according to a report from APC magazine, which with a delicious dollop of irony, is published on Microsoft's own MSN site.

"However, what we have been able to do with Microsoft is ship PCs with a Vista Business licence but with XP pre-loaded. That is still the majority of business computers we are selling today." In other words, the sale of an XP machine counts as a Vista sale, too.

And in a further echo of the Forrester report, HP claims many businesses are sitting tight and waiting for Windows 7. "Looking into the crystal ball, I don't think businesses will see much value in upgrading to Vista until late next year, and even so, Microsoft will probably have come out with something else by then," Rob Kingston, group manager of commercial product marketing for HP is quoted as saying.

Microsoft was unable to comment on HP's outburst at the time of publication, but it's response to Forrester's research claims Vista sales are healthy.

"It's important to note that we've sold 180 million copies of Windows Vista so far, 40 million of which were in the last quarter alone, and that there are thousands of enterprise customers deploying Windows Vista by the thousands of seats on a weekly basis, including heavy hitters like The United States Air Force, PPG Industries, and Cerner," the official Vista blog states.