Windows 7 Suffering from Vista Perceptions?
Interesting new data out: Windows 7 is not exactly selling like hotcakes. Sure, it’s selling much better than Vista, which only gained 1% market share per month, but it’s still not selling much faster than that. As the chart below indicates, it seems that 7 moved from 2% penetration at retail launch (when many were using the free beta) to 10% after 5 months–a rate of 1.6% per month. Not exactly flying off the shelves, especially considering that most of the adoption is likely from new PC sales rather than from upgrades.
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This recently came to my attention when I asked students in my computer classes which OS they used; of the Windows users, only a few had Windows 7, only a few more had Vista–the majority were using XP. Ironically, one of the Windows 7 users was someone who had just bought a Mac (and was using 7 on Parallels–he just switched from XP on a PC).
To put this into perspective, in order to reach Windows XP’s current 65% market share, Windows 7 will require roughly 40.6 months–or almost three and a half years. Mac OS adoption occurs much faster; it took Leopard and Snow Leopard just 27 months to reach 81% share of Mac OS users.
I’ve been using Windows 7 recently, and to me, it’s a pretty darn good OS. I agree with the general consensus, that 7 is what Vista should have been. Granted, 7 rips off the Mac OS far more than I had previously suspected–perhaps why I like it more–but nevertheless, I see no independent reason to use XP anymore, and if my school’s computers weren’t still XP-bound, requiring me to teach that OS, I would switch over completely.
Which makes me wonder: why hasn’t 7 taken off? It’s certainly good enough, stable enough. OK, so it’s not nearly as cheap as upgrading to Snow Leopard, but upgrade prices aren’t that bad. So why the lukewarm adoption rate? The only thing I can figure is that people are now so used to Vista mindset–that any post-XP Windows version is crap–that they don’t even consider moving to 7. If true, that’s pretty damaging to Microsoft, especially with the Halo effect for Apple becoming stronger and stronger. The iPad looks like it may move iPhone levels of success into the computer arena. If tons of people get iPads, they will probably be even more likely to make their next computer purchase a Mac than was true with the iPhone or iPod. The fact that Microsoft is now more or less refusing to develop a version of Office for the iPad is not going to help them much, what with the $30 iWork office suite being available on what is bound to be a big hit in the mobile computing space.
Microsoft is far from crumbling into dust, but these recent numbers do seem to signify some calcification; with Apple springing around with innovation after innovation, and Microsoft’s new stuff being either slow to catch on (Windows 7), a year away (Windows Phone 7), or still mired in the concept stage (the Courier tablet), it certainly does not look too good.
I pretty much agree with most of your comments here.
One reason why migration might be slow is that XP-to-7 migration is onerous, as I recall reading, while Vista-to-7 is more seamless.
Thus, people using XP are kind of stuck there. There machines are past their half life already (about 1.5 years) so why bother? That leaves Vista users. A lot of them will have concluded that MS builds crap and hestitate to give MS more money. Why not save the money and move up to Apple?
I am still stuck in the MS orbit. But I have no delusions. Microsoft makes crap. Its no surprise. MS buys the cheapest help it can get (MS was want of the leading forces at push the Government to expand H1B visas).
Vista seems like the obvious output to MS methodology and philosophies.
My brother was telling me that he thought 7 was as good as, or close enough anyway, to the operating system that Apple uses on the Mac. I’m not sure I agree.
MS is going to go the way of Chevy, while Apple a BMW but with the value quotient of a Toyota: meaning Apple provides value that a BMW never did (nice cars but… still a luxury). MS is the rust bucket of software companies.
I’ve got to decide whether or not to upgrade my Vista machine to 7. I’ll probably end up doing it, I love my Vista machine and just installed added memory and hard drive to keep it alive a little longer.
One thing is probably that you have to get Professional to have XP mode and back compatibility.
If you want to change the OS why is that? To have safer, faster, more stable and easier to use computer – right? But not to learn to use computer anew. You have some programs that you are comfortable with, and now you can’t use them if you don’t have an expensive version of the new OS.
“F… Y.. I’ll work on XP instead” – that’s what you’ll hear.
I think you might be missing the point if only slightly. Most PC users don’t really engage in buying new operating systems, they buy new computers which come with new OS (even if forced by the hand of Microsoft). Home computers have advanced significantly in the past few years not only in speed but in price. If you can get a relatively great machine for anything besides gaming for like $500 why go spend $150 or over $200 for XP compatibility for a new OS especially when your current machine may have cost you $1000.
If you have a dual core XP and/or Vista machine you’re probably still set for another year or 2 save for hardware failures. Also, with the infrequency of Windows OS releases and general lack of actual new features (at least things people actually want, and with all the crap Dell and similar producers like to pack on top for no reason) most people have no reason to upgrade.
I built my current machine the same month dual cores were released and as an artist I often need data or process intense applications and I still don’t find myself yearning to upgrade particularly soon.
Yes, an artist on Windows (3D applications are more stable here).
For a new buyer it’s not an issue and he usually stays with the system that the new computer is bundled with, but someone who is used to a few trusted tools in a well known environment doesn’t want changes that throw him off the track.
If it works, don’t fix it – those people usually revert back to XP or request it right away.
I think the biggest reason people don’t upgrade as much or as quickly is even more basic than anything above… XP works.
It works just fine. It works quite well, actually. Why upgrade if you don’t need to?
If your machine is fast enough, runs the stuff you need, and what you have right now works great, why would you spend money and screw around with it?
I am still running XP on my desktop. I have Win7 on my netbook simply because it was only a little bit more than XP, and it runs just fine as well. If/when I go for a significant upgrade to the desktop, I’ll use Win7, but why bother upgrading in the meanwhile?
Perhaps the reason people aren’t upgrading is because the older version is so GOOD that they just don’t feel like they need to.