Nine burning questions about how Vista is really doing

Computerworld - Four months after its official, belated release, figuring out how Windows Vista is doing in the market involves as much decoding as a Dan Brown mystery. Microsoft Corp. may trumpet impressive, McDonald's-esque stats -- 40 million copies shipped in 100 days, twice as fast as XP! -- but it politely ducks and weaves when the professionally curious seek many of the details behind those numbers.

Instead, there’s so much spin   -- from Microsoft,  from rivals such as Apple Inc.,  from market analysts pushing research and more research -- it would even leave Sasha Cohen dizzy. Here's our attempt to unravel this puzzle-shrinkwrapped-in-a-mystery.

1. Why does Microsoft talk about having shipped 40 million copies of Vista when everyone knows that doesn’t equal the actual number of users?

To give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, 40 million is the only number it can verify, and it’s the one Wall Street cares about in any case.

To arrive at that 40 million figure, according to Kevin Kutz, a director in the Windows client division, Microsoft tallied four numbers:

a) all licenses sold to PC makers for pre-installing Vista on their computers;
b) full and upgrade versions of Vista to be sold either as boxed product on retail shelves or at e-tail Web sites;
c) pay-per-downloads, via a new Web site called Windows MarketPlace, which it runs in partnership with retailers such as Circuit City; and
d) customers who redeemed coupons issued for free or discounted Vista upgrades if they bought PCs installed with XP between Oct. 26, 2006, and March 15, 2007.

Apart from d) and its direct sales to businesses (both of which we’ll get to later), Microsoft relies heavily on its ecosystem of channel partners to sell its software. That’s in contrast to firms such as Oracle Corp., which sells most of its software direct. But as a result, Microsoft counts shipments into the channel -- because they're easier to track, and because its partners are the ones actually paying Microsoft.

Microsoft’s Kutz acknowledges that because of the time it takes for Vista to wend its way through the channel into customers’ hands -- about one month, according to IDC analyst David Daoud -- its 40 million figure was higher than the actual number of users after 100 days.

2. Hey, doesn’t Microsoft also sell Vista directly to some big customers, too?

Yes, indeed. Microsoft does sell a lot of software straight to large enterprises and governments, though it declines to reveal how much. Moreover, those customers were actually allowed to start buying Vista on Nov. 30, two months before its official launch.

However, Microsoft is actually excluding all of those sales from its ongoing Vista license count. Why? Because despite announced reforms to its volume license policies, Microsoft has been slow to roll out some of the corresponding back-end technology. As a result, it still can’t get an accurate count of volume licenses. In any case, enterprise adoption of Vista appears to be slow among enterprises and governments.