The launch of Microsoft's new Vista operating system has been a long time coming. Missing the important pre-Christmas slot earned the software company a lot of criticism from partners and customers but Microsoft has committed to shipping the OS in January.
But now some analysts claim that a number of "events" in the IT industry have made it more likely that Microsoft may delay the launch of Vista again until at least May next year.
The reservations hinge around a research note, "Events aligning to make Vista delay more likely", published by analyst Gartner late last week, and take in market, political and industry issues that the researcher believes are beginning to stack up.
Gartner is at pains to stress that there is no technical reason it can see why Microsoft should not go ahead with launching Vista in January. The problem lies not with bug-fixing or the last-minute code glitches that normally hold back software releases — it's purely political according to Gartner.
Last week, Gartner published a research note that highlighted the "event" of 8 September, when Microsoft announced it may delay availability of Windows Vista in European Union (EU) countries due to concerns about the product's ability "to comply with European Commission (EC) antitrust regulations".
A delay for Vista now would be convenient for Microsoft, Gartner analyst David Mitchell-Smith suggests, because "when people start complaining about the delay, Microsoft can reasonably say 'don't blame us' and point the finger at the EC". Microsoft is "probably getting a bit tired" of the EU's stance, suggested Mitchell-Smith. "It's not unreasonable to think so."
Also, Microsoft wants to avoid "further litigation", the analyst argues, as it is already facing actions from Symantec/Veritas and Adobe and "while it would go far to settle corporate lawsuits", the analyst argues, "it is less likely to be able to resolve legal action by the EC as easily".
The European issue could prove very "complex" and as a result, Microsoft may delay "broad availability of Windows Vista in all markets, which aligns with Gartner's forecast that Vista will ship in 2Q07".
Microsoft could also decide "that a single code base for everyone would better serve the market and allow business customers to deploy a single image, usable in most of the world", Gartner argues.
Additionally, Microsoft could — and the analysts stress the word "could" — want to appease retailers who may struggle to get Vista into shops for the crucial Christmas period. Holding over until Easter may also be a welcome idea.
According to Gartner, these factors "create an air of reasonable doubt that may serve to prepare the market for the potential eventuality of a slip".
Another issue could be the overall state of the PC market. Last week, Gartner made one of its gloomiest predictions yet on the overall state of the PC market, saying that while worldwide PC shipments are "on pace" to increase by 10.5 percent to 233.7 million units in 2006, worldwide PC revenue is expected to decline by 2.5 percent to $198.3bn.
Gartner blames continuing price sensitivity in the market for the decline. "Unit growth will continue to be price driven for the next several quarters as PC replacement activity wanes and the battle between Intel and AMD escalates," said George Shiffler, research director for Gartner Dataquest's Client Platforms group.
And if the industry is expecting a shot in the arm from the imminent arrival of Vista, which is expected in the first quarter of next year, it should think again, according to Shiffler. "Vista's eventual release next year could stimulate some added growth," said Shiffler, "but we remain sceptical of Vista's impact".
Talkback
don't care
Isn't this the same company that was saying Microsoft would not ever get Vista out by the begining of the year because of the how complex the code was?
Why should anyone believe them now?
Why would anyone care if Vista ever arrives?
It is an unusable completely outdated and malware infested platform. Even if it arrives now, next year or the year after it is behind modern OS like Apples by several year and Apple will be raising the bar substantially early in the new year.
Hard to appear competitive when your platform is running on concepts and code obsolete for decades. A simple comparison would be VERY embarrassing especially with the state of the Vista beta and it's likelihood of substantial improvements by next year.
Longhorn / Vista was promised originally for the 2002/2003 time frame with features intended to compete with Apple's OS-X four versions ago. Any of the real improvement have long since been dropped. While Microsoft is still desperate to mimic what it can of Apples innovations they are pale, buggy and crappie imitations of long since replaced or improved concepts.
It has to be very difficult to make a case for Windows with informed clients. No wonder the rats are leaving the Microsoft ship for retirement or anything they can find that isn't a huge embarrassment for them.
Although it is unlikely that Windows will be challenged as the de-facto desktop, Microsoft is going to find that the open-source offerings (Red Hat and SuSE are still perceived as in the open-source camp) will begin to make some small in-roads into that sector.
At the back-end, the rot has already begun. SuSE and Red Hat are taking market share and as techies are prepared to look more open-mindedly at Linux, we will see a gradual change in the enterprise server rooms.
At the Web back end, not much will change. Windows has never been popular as a web server outside of the intranet. It is barely discernable as a web server on the Internet.
Messaging is 'seeing' new Linux hosted servers coming along, that offer the same collaboration technologies as Exchange, without the high licensing overheads.
Serious database installations will continue to be hosted on UNIX. Microsoft's SQL appeals to the less demanding requirements and where there is a WinTel comfort zone environment.
While I agree with most of the previous writer's arguements/comments, I think that Vista will be very popular on the enterprise and home desktops. It wil be the natural upgrade to XP Pro.
Microsoft still has a long future as the number one software company. But, the times they are a-changing.