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Thread ID: 77489	2007-03-11 20:21:00	Vista is taking off	Hitech (9024)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
532030	2007-03-13 04:33:00	Here's an interesting analogy. We saw a significant increase in Firefox use from users of our web sites (it's all reported in our web reports) in the past 12 months. But since IE7 came out, it has clawed back a large part of that shift towards Firefox. Why? Is IE7 that good that people automatically dump Firefox and switch back? No. People are inherently conservative, and most people, most of the time, tend to stick with what they feel (for whatever reason) is the de facto standard. This means competitors have to do more, much more, than just be better at what they do. In the case of IE7, it was the de facto standard but security issues knocked that perception enough, combined with Firefox being so good, that people were eventually swayed to switch apps. But then MS releases IE7, and if our web reports are to be believed, a large number of those new Firefox users quickly switched back to IE. Like long time voters for a politcal party who switched to the other side for one election but were really just waiting for any excuse to go back to where they felt more comfortable. Why does Norton continue to be used by so many people when there is plenty of evidence you can get perfectly adequate protection from free/cheaper apps that have less of a hit on system performance? Why, frankly, does Apple have such massive market share in MP3 players when there are perfectly good competitors out there? It isn’t about the quality of the product. It’s about reaching a point where market perception says you are the de facto, standard product and that the competition must be 10 times better before that perception shifts.	Biggles (121)
532031	2007-03-13 05:33:00	This all kind of misses the point though. It does not matter - not one jolt - whether the kind of user who goes to a "proper" PC store, or builds their own PC buys Vista. Vista will quickly become the default OS installed on new PCs. That's a fact. That will fairly quickly, in the next 12 months, drive up its market penetration. If you think Vista will somehow magically fail because a niche part of the audience - and yes, you guys are niche - opts to stay with XP or run Linux, then you are kidding yourselves. This has nothing to do with any user making a conscious choice. It will be what comes with a new PC. Those new PCs will need to be supported. The new Vista users will need to be supported. The knowledgeable users will eventually need to be running Vista to support those users. I'm not saying that's the way things should be, but that's the way they will be. And you miss the point, Unless Vista generates massive sustained sales growth then it is a failure, If MS spend 7 years and billions of dollars creating a new OS that only sells in the same numbers as a 7 year old product then well, Failure. To me 40 percent increase in sales at this time sounds incedibly weak.	Metla (12)
532032	2007-03-13 06:30:00	OK, you convinced me. So, the consumer here is like a chicken deciding whether Tegel or KFC is a better career choice? No free-range egglayer option?	R2x1 (4628)
532033	2007-03-13 08:33:00	And you miss the point, Unless Vista generates massive sustained sales growth then it is a failure, If MS spend 7 years and billions of dollars creating a new OS that only sells in the same numbers as a 7 year old product then well, Failure. To me 40 percent increase in sales at this time sounds incedibly weak. Sorry Mets, but I don't see the logic there. There are only two ways MS can make Vista sales - new PC sales or retail sales to users upgrading existing hardware. New PC sales are at best only slightly impacted by the new OS. The OS kickstarts hardware upgrades but not, by itself new PC sales -- that's down to standard economic forces. Upgrades to existing PCs will always be tied not just to consumer demand for a new OS, but the natural upgrade cycle of users. Who installed XP the moment it came out? I didn't. There is no way that MS has a budget that requires a massive spike in Windows sales for Vista to be a success, because there is no way they could expect to generate massive spike. What, 260 million copies of Vista have to be sold in 4 months for it to be success? They cannot, realistically dramatically increase new PC sales based soley on the new OS. But if Vista means that most desktops continue to be Windows based, then ultimately they get their money. If they maintain their market share in the desktop OS they win. We still have Windows 2000 PCs here - it is actually still our official OS. But new PC purchases have seen it replaced for the most part by XP systems. The same will happen with Vista and when it does MS gets its money in some shape or form. They spent 7 years developing it but its not like they're a game company, making no money till the product shipped. In those 7 years millions apon millions of copies of XP were shipped with new PCs. Many Die hards who resisted XP somewhere in there probably were forced to upgrade. MS continued to make money off the Windows OS. I'm not saying they wouldn't have been happier if it had taken 5 years to do and more people were going crazy for it. But attempts to predict the failure of Vista and a sudden opening up of the OS market as a result strike me as being wishful thinking.	Biggles (121)
532034	2007-03-13 08:40:00	Why bother then to ever create a new product? As you say all new PC's will ship with an MS product. Unless the product generates more sales then the existing product then there was no point apart from wasting many years and billions of dollars. Might as well have sat on XP and let the billions roll on in aye? MS can still win and have a failure, Me was a cracker, And in many analists eyes so was XP.	Metla (12)
532035	2007-03-13 09:06:00	Why bother then to ever create a new product? As you say all new PC's will ship with an MS product. Unless the product generates more sales then the existing product then there was no point apart from wasting many years and billions of dollars. Might as well have sat on XP and let the billions roll on in aye? MS can still win and have a failure, Me was a cracker, And in many analists eyes so was XP. Yeah well, we could argue philosophically why there actually is the need to make a new product except that that's what people expect. It's not just MS -- how many new versions of products introduce dubious improvements plus more bugs? Truth is, plenty of products do not need a 12-monthly refresh and would be better off not getting upgraded until there's a real need/improvement there. But that's not how capitalism works. Thing is, in those cases there is often competition. Symantec has to demonstrate to its installed base that it is giving them an "improvement" otherwise they might start paying attention to the competition that are releasing new versions every year. Do any of them actually need to do so? In reality there isn't a technical reason why the commercial security vendors need to release a "new" version every 12 months. With MS, they get a free ride with Windows. If Windows had 30% of the desktop OS market, and Mac another 30%, and a commercial Linux product another 20%, and assorted non commercial Linux builds the rest, then I'm sure Windows would have popped out new versions every 2 years and would cost much less than it does. As it stands they can wait 7 years and still bank money, BUT they still have to put the new product out there at some point so people can see some advance/reason for having a spanking new PC, otherwise they just might eventually begin to feel that Windows isn't that necessary to the whole computing thing after all.	Biggles (121)
532036	2007-03-13 09:14:00	I trust no one, not even myself. Nice avatar Bruce, but....	Murray P (44)
532037	2007-03-13 10:04:00	Just a few points . I think people are getting a little confused with, standards, market leaders and monopolies . Of course they can coexist in the one entity but very few monopolies set (high) standards although they will capture (often low) standards or manage standards that suit their own commercial objectives . Strictly speaking MS are not a monopoly, but an overwhelming market leader* . The mechanism of that market leadership being, to paraphrase, irrelevant to this discussion except to say that there are choices and good ones to the consumer, but less choice to the resellers where perhaps MS holds the truer monopoly, propped up by proprietary and/or defacto "standards" and IP as much as anything else (apart from MS being pretty much a self perpetuating sure thing for developers, resellers/hardware vendors) . Because MS are not a monopoly, though they may act like one, they need to keep producing new product . They do this not so much I believe, as Bruce says, to keep the punters happy, but to capture new standards and market segments . Some will be new ideas, most will be a proprietary twist on existing ideas, the important part to MS being that it's their proprietary IP and not someone else's . Without turning over this new ground, MS's share would be chipped away, albeit very slowly due to the reseller/hardware/developer relationship/bondage . Another factor is the business market . If enough large commercial enterprises do not buy in to Vista, then new consumer PC sales will not be enough and it may well bomb as ME did . That of course excepts those that will be forced by license agreements to upgrade, though I'm not sure such agreements would stand up to the scrutiny of the courts if Vista was proved to be a lemon (NFFP) . * I didn't want to get in to business practices that are more akin to a monopoly, when that monopoly is not, say a utility or service provider via regulation .	Murray P (44)
532038	2007-03-13 10:18:00	Just a few points . I think people are getting a little confused with, standards, market leaders and monopolies . Of course they can coexist in the one entity but very few monopolies set (high) standards although they will capture (often low) standards or manage standards that suit their own commercial objectives . Strictly speaking MS are not a monopoly, but an overwhelming market leader* . The mechanism of that market leadership being, to paraphrase, irrelevant to this discussion except to say that there are choices and good ones to the consumer, but less choice to the resellers where perhaps MS holds the truer monopoly, propped up by proprietary and/or defacto "standards" and IP as much as anything else (apart from MS being pretty much a self perpetuating sure thing for developers, resellers/hardware vendors) . Because MS are not a monopoly, though they may act like one, they need to keep producing new product . They do this not so much I believe, as Bruce says, to keep the punters happy, but to capture new standards and market segments . Some will be new ideas, most will be a proprietary twist on existing ideas, the important part to MS being that it's their proprietary IP and not someone else's . Without turning over this new ground, MS's share would be chipped away, albeit very slowly due to the reseller/hardware/developer relationship/bondage . You said that better than I . I agree . Another factor is the business market . If enough large commercial enterprises do not buy in to Vista, then new consumer PC sales will not be enough and it may well bomb as ME did . That of course excepts those that will be forced by license agreements to upgrade, though I'm not sure such agreements would stand up to the scrutiny of the courts if Vista was proved to be a lemon (NFFP) . Fair point, and I surpose in this scenario Metla's Vista failure would be a done deal . However I think it is way too early to make that call on Vista yet . But Vista does, again, highlight the uneasy relationship between the business customer and the home consumer for MS . Like I say, officially we still perfectly happy running Win2000 at work . What an IT manager wants out of a new Windows OS, and what Joe User wanst out of it are not necessarily the same thing . Its possible home users will embrace it -- for whatever reasons, good or bad -- while companies will find XP does all they want . But again, I think it is ar too early to draw the conclusion that this will happen . MS has to have banked (forgive the pun) on much slower adoption in the corporate sector and I doubt the financial types are running around in March 2007 burning their swipe cards just because the corporate sector hasn't ordered truckloads of Vista upgrades . . . .	Biggles (121)
532039	2007-03-13 10:36:00	I was talking to a guy in a pc shop(Masterton) the other day and he had eight people booked in to get XP before they could no longer get it. There were a lot of people who held off buying a new PC until Vista appeared so that is going to show up in the initial figures.	mikebartnz (21)
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