Since Microsoft announced that they had reached the 20 million mark of Windows Vista licenses, people have been criticizing the numbers, and rumors have been swirling that the numbers are straight-out made up.
Recently, PCMag published an article stating how the numbers did not add up with Vista sales. Microsoft says that they sold 17 million licenses of Windows XP during the first 2-and-a-half months, so Vista is doing far better than XP. 3 reasons that PCMag stated of "why the folks at Redmond are probably on Kool-aid":
- Microsoft's sales period for the license sales is significantly longer than 30 days—more like four months.
- License sales into the channel do not correspond to actual Vista PC sales out of the channel.
- The numbers don't match up with real world PC sales volumes.
Well, there are other sources that argue this is just due to the fact that there are way more PCs out there now than when XP was starting out, and plus Microsoft is counting licenses, not actual bought copies sold. So for example, if a computer store ordered a ton of new PCs, but didn't sell them, this would count as sold licenses of Vista.
It's quite understandable why people think that these numbers are false -- after all, Vista doesn't seem to be selling by leaps and bounds, or at least doesn't seem to be doing that much better than XP. So are the numbers made-up? No, I doubt that Microsoft would completely make up numbers just to fool the public for a brief amount of time while they bask in their glory. Microsoft isn't stupid. However, the pressure for Microsoft to sell Vista fast may have caused them to stretch the numbers by adding in some hidden statistic that we're not currently aware of. Or perhaps Vista is selling better than we think.