Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office System: One successful year on the market

Archive notice: This article was originally published on February 1, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.

One year after its market launch, Microsoft has already sold more than 100 million Windows Vista licences. Microsoft Office sales have also exceeded Microsoft’s high expectations. “Demand from corporate customers for Windows Vista and Office alone, together with good Christmas business involving these products, caused revenue in this area to rise by 18 percent in the past quarter,” says Chris Liddell, Chief Financial Officer at Microsoft. “In Germany too, we are very satisfied with the sales figures for Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office System,” adds Achim Berg, Chairman of the Management Board of Microsoft Germany. “Customers and partners confirm the high quality of the new versions to us.” Hardware partners and retailers therefore also benefit from the success.

According to a study by CurrentAnalysis, 89.2 percent of all Windows-based notebooks worldwide are already being sold with Windows Vista Home Premium. According to a BITKOM estimate, two thirds of all privately used PCs in Germany are shipped with Windows Vista. Microsoft is also benefiting from sharply increased demand for PCs in Western Europe, with Germany recording above-average growth, according to market-research company Gartner. In the third quarter of 2007, compared with the previous year, Germany, with 23 percent growth to 2.7 million units, was ahead of France (18.4 percent) and England (13.6 percent). According to two current studies by BITKOM and TechConsult, around 70 percent of German citizens already use computers at home. This puts Germany in sixth place across the EU.

“Laptops are the main force behind the boom,” says Prof. August-Wilhelm Scheer, President of BITKOM. A total of five million mobile devices will be sold in Germany in 2007. Christian Eigen, Chief Financial Officer of MEDION AG, confirms: “In particular, we have also recorded a significant increase over the previous year in sales of notebooks and desktop PCs with the new Windows Vista operating system.”

Windows Vista Service Pack 1

Microsoft is constantly working to update Windows Vista, for example through security updates, compatibility and functional enhancements. These are made available through Windows Update. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1), which will be available shortly, provides a collection of the updates. It also contains improvements to security, reliability, performance and management. Although it will not offer new functions, it will provide some enhancements to existing ones.

Because important and useful updates are already available, consumers and companies do not have to wait for SP1 before buying Windows Vista. The Gartner analysts confirm this: “Microsoft is very experienced in providing updates through services such as Windows Update, Microsoft Update and Automatic Update. Services Packs are therefore no longer as important as they used to be. Organisations should take SP1 into account in their testing and installation plans, but should not significantly delay installing Windows Vista on new PCs by waiting for SP1.”

Meanwhile, 43,000 hardware products can already be updated through Windows Update, compared with 23,000 when Windows Vista was launched. Since then, more than 15,000 devices from over 600 partners that are compatible with Windows Vista have been completed. More than 50 games for Windows Vista, which have already sold a total of more than 2.5 million copies, are currently available. More than 120 business-critical applications from all well-known software manufacturers support Windows Vista, including the five most important security applications.

2007 Microsoft Office System

Service Pack 1 for the 2007 Microsoft Office System has been available since mid-October 2007. It provides the stability and increased performance requested by customers, as well as further improvements to user security. This Service Pack also contains all updates released for the 2007 Office Suite before December 2007. Like Windows Vista, the current version of Microsoft Office has been available for a year. In doing so, it contributes significantly to the company’s success and to revenue at the Microsoft Business Division.

Microsoft increases revenue

Since the operating system’s market launch, revenue at the Microsoft Client Division has increased by an average of more than 20 percent in each quarter. Through the new versions of Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Exchange, the Microsoft Business Division increased revenue in the past quarter by more than 20 percent compared with the previous year. In the final quarter of calendar year 2007, revenue at the Microsoft Client Division rose from 2.586 to 4.335 billion US dollars compared with the previous year. At the Microsoft Business Division, revenue increased from 3.513 to 4.811 billion US dollars during the same period.

Numerous companies in Germany are currently testing Windows Vista, and some companies have already begun the transition. These include B. Braun, Computacenter, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, Biologische Heilmittel Heel GmbH, Deutsche Bahn AG and Inveso.

Further links:

• Microsoft