Must suck to be Steve Ballmer right now. The Microsoft CEO has again gone on an insane tirade saying that slowing Vista sales are due to rampant piracy. With Vista sales forecasts overreached and plenty of issues plaguing the OS, Ballmer went on the offensive saying:
“Piracy reduction can be a source of Windows revenue growth, and I think we’ll make some piracy improvements this year.”
“We have new technologies built into Windows Vista, something we call Windows Genuine Advantage [that] we’ve really dialed up in capabilities with the Vista release,” he said. “I do think that will bring some revenue growth. We will have strong growth in the Windows business in emerging markets: China, India, Brazil, Russia and many others. Those markets are very high piracy.”
You heard it folks. Markets in China, India, Brazil, and Russia are no longer markets and are now very high piracy.
Ballmer is just upset that slumping sales figures, a flawed OS, and piracy are painting a bad picture for Vista. Maybe Microsoft should innovate rather than copy if it wants to boost sales. It worked for the Xbox, it can work for Windows.
Ballmer Blames Pirates for Poor Vista Sales [Arnnet via Digg]
Piracy? Ok, perhaps a small percentage. But here are the reasons I won’t be buying Vista:
1. Over priced.
2. No “must have” features in Vista for me.
3. MS pushed the hardware requirements to high.
4. Application compatibility.
hah, that’s a great photo..
but, he’s not on the offensive. piracy in china (for example) has been above 90% for years and it’s hurting the country’s growth. local companies make 9-10 dollars for every dollar microsoft sells in legitimate markets. that’s a lot of money being washed down the tubes.
that’s why the gov’t has started cracking down. where did you get in this statement that he doesn’t consider china a market? he’s saying the exact opposite – it can be a real market where revenues can be at least somewhat proportional to usage. same is true in india and other developing economies..
Last week I helped a friend purchase and install a new PC with Vista. We bought the PC, MS Office and protection software at Best Buy. A tech at BB told us they needed to install the protection software because it needed so “tuning to run under Vista” and the software provider had given BB the fixes needed to get it installed.
The system came up fine with the new software but the trouble began when we tried to install DSL from ATT/Yahoo. We called ATT and they spent over 1 1/2 hours telling us things to “try” to get the package installed. They finally said “Vista is very new, has many problems and we won’t be able to install your ATT/Yahoo package until JUNE, 2007″. They did get DSL, finally, running under Vista but only when it was directly connected to the phone outlet and without the ATT/Yahoo software. ATT gave us a phone number to call for Vista support and they said this support team could get our ATT/Yahoo package running. They said MS needed to reset some security settings in Vista for things to run. Yeah, sure ! My friend is probably going to cancel his DSL subscription but first wants to ensure that Comcast can support Vista. We couldn’t believe after all this time that manufacturers had to get ready for Vista that the support would be soooo bad. Meanwhile, my wife, is using her 2 month old Apple without any problems and it does most of what Vista is promising to do in the future. Steve Jobs, this is a great opportunity for Apple.
In my opinion, Vista’s biggest problem is compatibility. Where are the drivers? Why isn’t all the software working correctly?
Other than that stuff, where is the must-have? Aero? Do you really think I’m going to shell out hundreds of dollars for a pretty skin and something that’s readily available via third-party software?
I think the biggest draw that Vista has right now is DX10, and there aren’t enough games taking advantage of that either! Making Halo 2 a Vista exclusive was a pathetic attempt to get the gamers to buy it; It’s like they didn’t realize that all the Halo lovers had already bought the damn game for the 360!
Like most relatively well-informed people on the intarwebs, I’ll be waiting for SP1 before even thinking about jumping on the Vista boat. By then, they should have the major compatibility kinks mentioned above more-or-less worked out.
You hear that MS? We’re all waiting for you to fix the shit that’s wrong first; we’ve learned well since the days of 98 and ME.
In my opinion, Vista’s biggest problem is compatibility. Where are the drivers? Why isn’t all the software working correctly?
Other than that stuff, where is the must-have? Aero? Do you really think I’m going to shell out hundreds of dollars for a pretty skin and something that’s readily available via third-party software?
I think the biggest draw that Vista has right now is DX10, and there aren’t enough games taking advantage of that either! Making Halo 2 a Vista exclusive was a pathetic attempt to get the gamers to buy it; It’s like they didn’t realize that all the Halo lovers had already bought the damn game for the 360!
Like most relatively well-informed people on the intarwebs, I’ll be waiting for SP1 before even thinking about jumping on the Vista boat. By then, they should have the major compatibility kinks mentioned above more-or-less worked out.
You hear that MS? We’re all waiting for you to fix the shit that’s wrong first; we’ve learned well since the days of 98 and ME.
And I apologize in advance if this is a double-post; the first one isn’t showing up (thanks for not showing love to the Opera users!).
What jump are you guys talking about. The hardware requirement jump from XP to Vista was a FRACTION of what the jump from 95 to XP was, and in the same 6 year time frame.
I do admit though that it is frustrating to have a ‘top of the line’ pc from last year absolutely choke on Vista.
I run 2gb of RAM with my Athlon64 5000+, and I would recommended anyone in web or application development run 4gb, whereas you can get away with 2gb in XP without much chance of slowdown.
Windows 3.0 Mem Requirements: 2mb RAM recommended
Windows 95 Mem Requirements: 4mb RAM recommended (2x more than 4 years previous)
Windows XP Mem Requirements: 128mb RAM recommended (32x more than 6 years previous)
Windows Vista Mem Requirements: 1gb RAM recommended (8x more than 6 years previous)
Say what you will about Apple’s OS X update schedule or pricing, but it’s worth pointing out that each release has been noticeably faster than the one before it – though to be fair, RAM requirements have also risen. Most people that upgraded from 10.2 to 10.3, or 10.3 to 10.4, were quite pleased with the improvement in performance after the upgrade.
The biggest issues of Vista are hardware and software compatible. If I upgrade my XP to Vista, at least 4 applications won’t work. I did run Vista upgrade advisor, it reported the compatible issues. I tried to upgrade one of my Dell laptop with 1 GB RAM, which was purchased last year, it took me 3 hours to get it upgraded. After upgrading, guess what, IE7 stopped working, I could not access the Internet! Vista is not ready yet, Microsoft still has a lot of work to do to make the OS work smoothly with its own applications.
Hardware compatible issues can be fixed easily. I can add more RAM and Vista required Video Card. But what about our existing applications? We have invested a lot on software for our business, Vista is not compatible with our SQL2000 based application. I do think the other users will have the same problem. Now Microsoft has to make the decision: Let applications run on XP also can run on Vista, or leave users like me stay in XP age.
Just a thought here… I have been reading your blog lately and overall find it rather entertaining and informative. However, I feel the need to leave my opinion on the issue of piracy (with respect to Vista) in developing countries, particularly China. I agree with the comment made by Paul above. I’ve been living in Southern China, in a city called Suzhou, for the past four months and before that lived here for almost a year between 2005 and 2006. The average person pays about $2-3 for a copy of Windows to install on their PCs. I’m even perhaps estimating that a little high, as it can be had in some places for about 10RMB, or about $1.30 at this point. You can bet that those are not licensed copies, and with millions of people in China using this pirated software I am not surprised that Microsoft feels they are losing money in China and other developing countries due to piracy.
Vista is rubbish, that is why sales are down