Microsoft recently announced that they plan to cut the price on several retail versions of their newest operating system, Windows Vista. As you can imagine, this is a move that comes to a shock to many. In fact, this move is one that nobody saw coming; even though Vista has been struggling to keep up, and it has taken a lot of flack from first time users.
In the United States, Microsoft has decided to greatly reduce the price of the high end version known as Vista Ultimate. The price of Vista Ultimate has fallen to $219 from a previous retail price of $299. Additionally, prices for the popular Home Premium addition are also being reduced from $159 to $129. As you can see, these are no small price reductions.
Windows Vista was finally released in January of 2007 to much anticipation. Since being released, Vista has sold well over 100 million copies. With that being said, the main reason for this is that the operating system is installed on most of the PCs on the market. When it comes to retail sales, Vista is much more sluggish. In fact, when compared to the sales of XP over the same timeline, Vista is lagging well behind.
One of the reasons for the lack of retail sales is that many experts and industry professionals have been critical of the new operating system. In fact, many users have decided to ditch Vista altogether and install XP on their computer. This is not good news for Microsoft.
Microsoft officials feel that lowering the price of Windows Vista will make it more accessible to the masses. While they will lose money on each sale in the retail marketplace, the company feels that this revenue will be made up in PC sales when buyers decide to upgrade thanks to a lower price.
It is safe to say that Microsoft priced Vista too high upon its initial release. Although it has taken more than a year to slash the prices, the company finally seems to be on the right track. They are hoping that this price reduction will increase sales across the board.
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Comments
symonds said on February 29th at 09:11 am,
Any slach in rates is always welcome. but then Vista has been a non starter and I don’t think ‘price’ was a factor. The whole industry was sceptible regarding. Though I am using XP, I don’t think Vista has many supporters. Lets see how the industry reacts to this decision
ricky said on March 1st at 08:50 am,
It’s really a shocking news from Microsoft,even I also didn’t expect this news to come out so early.
It’s a marketing strategy at the end……. Bill Gates might have some plans in his mind before releasing new windows operating system.
Nick said on March 2nd at 09:16 pm,
This is a good move by microsoft, to boost up their sales of vista, which was vitnessing a slump in sales in the recent past, although it may have been a success. people have lost charm on vista but had wanted to stick with xp itself.