Yeh, they are talking about Vista being released in 2H of 2006, but other
versions and language packs, as well as Windows Starter 2007 being
available fully by 2007.
When Microsoft says it's going to hit a quarter or half it usually means
their only chance will be to hit the very last day of that window. Microsoft
would probably be saying December, except that they know if you don't get
product out by Thanksgiving there's a good chance nobody will be in the
customer's office to put in the PO and/or get approvals.
Windows XP, this same thing happened. Released, and some functionality for
languages etc. released a few months afterwarsds :
Hmm, let's review official availability dates of Windows consumer OS:
08/1995 Windows 95
06/1998 Windows 98
09/2000 Windows Me
10/2001 Windows XP
08/2004 Windows XP SP2
In every case, the OS was available in plenty of time for that year's
critical fourth quarter, which is by far the biggest and most important
sales quarter for every OEM, VAR, and retailer. This is the first time
they've missed it in more than a decade.
Vista availablility for volume licenses in November will have almost no
impact on 2006 sales. No sane business is going to buy large volume licenses
for Vista in 2006 unless they're offered incredibly deep discounts, but they
still won't deploy until mid-2007 at the earliest. Note that the business
products (Windows 2000, Server 2003, and R2) became available early in their
respective years, because businesses need that time to evaluate and decide
whether to install/upgrade. So this was just to save face and say they
shipped something in 2006, even if almost nobody *bought* it in 2006.
OEMs generally make the OS decision for consumers, who have the OS installed
and shipped to them on new hardware. Most likely, the OEMs were very
concerned about an immediate ship of such a different OS causing significant
support hassles during a time when they'll already be busy. That is not the
right time to also be training engineering and support on a new OS. Even if
the OEMs shipped a "free upgrade to Vista" coupon with every system, a lot
of users won't want to upgrade once they have their systems set up.
Here are two possible outcomes. One is that consumers hold off their Q4
purchasing until next year in order to get Vista installed and debugged on
their new hardware. That will be bad for all PC makers--except Apple.
Another is that consumers will go ahead and buy new systems with XP. I think
this is more likely and it will be bad for Vista. Oh well, there's always Q4
2007.
) Nothing we didn't