NPD Group: sales of Vista for businesses better than expected

NPD Group: sales of Vista for businesses better than expected

Research company NPD Group has said in a report that the sales of the Vista operating system for the businesses have been better than originally expected.

The sale of the Vista OS outpaced the first month’s tally for Windows 2000. And it just slightly trailed the figures for the Windows XP operating system for Microsoft.

The report further said that the commercial revenues from Vista in December were 62.5 percent better than the figures for Windows 2000 in March 2000. However, this figure is slightly less than what the company got in the commercial channel for Windows XP in its first month of sale.

NPD analyst Chris Swenson spoke about their research findings: “I think these results could be classified as ’strong,’ or at least ’stronger than expected. Although Vista dollars were slightly lower than XP dollars in its first full month, I consider Microsoft’s December results to be very impressive, given the commercial-only ’soft launch’ approach that Microsoft took with the OS.”

However, these figures are only from the U.S. licenses sold indirectly to businesses through resellers. The research group does not track the sales made directly from the company.

Swenson added: “Sometime after January 30, when Microsoft makes Vista available to the general public and ratchets up the marketing campaign, I suspect that we will likely see sales of Vista in the commercial channel begin to meet or surpass levels previously set by XP.”