U.K. retailer links poor profits to Vista sales

Poor sales of Windows Vista-related products have hit the profits of retailer PC World, according to its parent company, DSG International.

In an interim trading statement issued on Thursday, DSG said a 0.6 percent drop in its group profit margin over the 24 weeks to October 13 was "largely driven by slower Vista-related hardware sales and a changing sales mix in computing."

"PC World delivered good sales performance against a tough prior-year comparative in the back-to-school period," said the group's chairman, John Collins. "The reduction in laptop stocks that arose out of disappointing sales of Vista-related products and a changing sales mix have reduced gross margins by around 2 percent in the computing division, impacting group profits by around 20 million pounds ($40.68 million) in the first half. Stocks are now at normal levels, and we expect to recover some of the lost margin through the second half."

Windows Vista was released to business customers in November 2006 and consumers in January this year.

A recent U.S. report comparing early sales figures of Vista and its predecessor, XP, has suggested that Vista is selling poorly there.

Research released earlier this month also claimed that business sales of PCs with pre-installed Vista were slowing.

However, Dell has come out in support of the operating system with a prediction that most of its business customers will have migrated to Vista by 2009.

David Meyer of ZDNet UK reported from London.

[protagonistic]

RE: U.K.-retailer-links-poor-profits-to-Vista-sales

"However, Dell has come out in support of the operating system
with a prediction that most of its business customers will have
migrated to Vista by 2009."

That is presuming Dell has any business customers left by then to
migrate. Talk about a fatal combination, Dell and Vista...

[Penguinisto]

About business customers...

Most of us buy Dells with no operating system on them. It's easier to simply plop on a company disk image (workstations), or build it in-house from scratch (servers).

Dell servers are damned near everywhere, IMHO.

/P

[giuliocesare]

RE: "RE: U.K.-retailer-..." by protagonistic

Not everyone uses Linux, and not everyone will use Linux. In fact, I agree with Dell: most people will still buy Windows because that is the OS that they know and are familiar with. And considering the fact that now XP has a fixed discontinuation date (June 30, 2008), plus the fact that most applications at some point in the next (5-6 years?) will not work on XP - most people will migrate to Vista, sooner or later.

[NPGMBR]

Not Making the Connection

Something about this story just doesn't seem to make sense to me. Is this a PC store that only sells Vista related products or is there something else that im missing?

[Sumatra-Bosch]

Everyone Everywhere Hates VIsta

eom

[giuliocesare]

Not me!

"Everyone Everywhere Hates Vista?" Not me!

[richto]

Its way better than any alternative

Its way better than any alternative

[Ted Miller]

For those who have not heard it yet....

There is a rumor going around that Vista was developed in India by a bunch of linux users. This was mentioned by a programmer of Indian descent who knows the programers that did the Vista development, and are solid Linux adherents.

Can anyone verify or deny this rumor?

[regulator1956]

False

"There is a rumor going around that Vista was developed in India by a bunch of linux users."

It was actually developed by little green men and women living in the Amazon rain forest.

Those hundreds of Microsoft developers in Redmond and other offices just sat around drinking coffee and shooting pool while the rain forest guys had to slave away for $0.05 per hour and read the constant Balmer-mail to work faster.

[fred dunn]

Vista is the best reason to switch to Ubuntu

I have used MS products since DOS 2.0 and they have made their mis-steps along the way but usually corrected them quickly.
However MS seems to be sticking with Vista even though it was delayed the delayed then features pulled and finally what we have is the result.
I am not a linux fan but will switch to Ubuntu at home when XP goes off support. I will have to continue with Vista at work since we have an enterprise agreement with them. Currently I have two systems one Vista Enterprise on a Dell GX620 and the other XP SP2 on a Dell GX260. I use the old GX260 as my primary production machine.
I have also reinstantiated the REAL admin account and disable all of that UAC junk and gone back to classic menu.
We (I) also run the key license server which is another aspect of Vista I don't like, not at the enterprise level but at the home. If you upgrade your system which I do alll the time then there is a very good chance you are going to have to re-activate Vista else it goes into reduced functionality mode.
I plan on requesting a 20" iMac in addition to what I have since our group is responsible for centralized management of the institution's systems.
I can see why this business is losing money because most every computer that you can buy in a store now come only in Vista and who in their right mind wants that?

[Sumatra-Bosch]

Vista: Half as Popular as Larry Craig !

And almost as stable.