The 20 million copies shipped represent Vista licenses sold to PC manufacturers, copies of upgrades and the full packaged product sold to retailers and upgrades ordered online from January 30 to February 28.
Windows Business Group corporate vice-president Bill Veghte said the company was encouraged by the response and although early in the product life-cycle, it seemed Vista would become the fastest adopted version of Windows ever.
The company said sales of Vista after a month exceeded sales of its predecessor Windows XP over two months when it was first introduced. The company announced in January 2002 Windows XP licences of about 17 million in two months.
But reports from the US analyst community say it is too early to tell what is happening with Vista, and not much can be learned from the Microsoft data.
For example, one analyst said in 2002 there were 51 million PCs sold worldwide, while about 96 million PC were expected to be sold this year – suggesting Vista has not overwhelmed the market.
Another analyst said shipments of Vista to retailers in the US in February was 56 per cent lower than Windows XP’s first month of shipments to retailers.
About 80 per cent of Windows revenues is derived from PC manufacturers, who preload the software on machines sold at retail.
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