“DSG, which runs the PC World and Currys chains, warned today that disappointing sales of Microsoft’s Vista operating system have cost it £20m in lost profit,” Julia Finch and Graeme Wearden report for The Guardian.
“The retailer said that sales of computers running Vista, and boxed copies of the software, had both failed to meet its expectations,” Finch and Wearden report.
“DSG had expected consumers to trade up their hardware to use the new operating system and the group’s PC World chain ordered in tens of thousands more laptops in anticipation. But the rush never arrived and PC World was forced to slash prices to get rid of the overstocks – cutting margins by 200 basis points,” Finch and Wearden report.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Vista: Microsoft’s Windows Albatross. Ultimate edition.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “twelveightyone” for the heads up.]
No comment’s? I guess there’s not much more to say!
I know what’ll get this off your thumb drive…..
Just wait. In five years, consumers will come around.
It takes that long for Windows users to boot up and load their home pages..
So, now they’re pinning their hopes on the Palm Foleo, HTC Touch and the Dell Ditty.
I’ve never understood how people can say ‘lost profit’. There are never any guarantees for making profit to begin with. Profit isn’t a birthright for companies. How can you lose something you never had.
Just like the RIAA saying lost sales for ALL digital downloads. No guarantee they would have ever bought to begin with.
Note: 200 basis points = 2%.
200 just has more drama than 2%.
Dex
Don’t forget the SamSung Blue “Craig”….
Who was the schmuck who ordered tens of thousands of laptops in the hope people would buy Vista???
I bet he feels like a dickhead now!
I dont think it will be too long before Windows markets share drops down to about 60%. Id guess probably by the end of 2011.
I don’t believe this guy. Microsoft says that Vista has exceeded expectations (and I doubt a company that prestegious would lie). The only logical conclusion is that this retail chain is doing something wrong. My guess is that they’ve figured out some way to keep the demo machines running and let users see that they’re paying for. If he had any brains at all, he’d know that you’re supposed to cripple the machines, blame the problems on unsupervised kids, and promis that Vista will work great once the customer gets it home. Doesn’t this guy know anything?!?!?!
From what we are experiencing with the latest “gold” build of Leopard, may I suggest to MDN that it’s a bit premature to keep on trashing the standard by which Apple and it’s products are judged.
Our best IT guy says this… (1) get a PC box or enclosure of any kind – including any Mac container – (2) wipe the drive to get rid of all extraneous crap and crud, (3) install any version of Vista and watch it rock ‘n roll. Stable as a rock, a great experience.
Mac machines will come with Leopard and start off clean as a whistle. So, what if Leopard doesn’t work. Then what?
“Profit isn’t a birthright for companies.”
But that contradicts the MS business plan. Right?
Silly wabbit, Microsoft still got their money from these poorly informed dimwits. Ha. Ha.
Having played with the pre-Gold build, I’d say that Caution Ahead is a wee bit pessimistic. Perhaps he’s an El Reg reader. Nothing wrong with that, of course.
559 was already pretty tight. There were issues here and there, but no great instabilities, and the system was quite fast, even on my G4 1.5 GHz PowerBook, running on FW800 from an external disk. I felt the slowdown coming back to Tiger.
There are small things, and there will continue to be small things. Compared to the Jag->Tiger transition, though, it will be No Big Deal®
“Our best IT guy . . .”
Wasn’t he the guy that was standing by a highway off ramp a week ago holding a cardboard sign that said, “W1ll backup data 4 food”?
And maybe their “best IT guy” lacks necessary experience or perspective. We simply don’t know. He might be a genius… but again unknown.
As the report states, DSG bought tens of thousands more Vista laptops in the anticipation that Vista would make them a nice profit on Windows users buying new hardware to then run Vista.
It is that failure of Windows users to do that in sufficient numbers for DSG to then profit on their tens of thousands of laptops they bought in order to then sell.
Maybe Windows users have really seen the light and come over to the Macintosh? Talk about Halo effect and also welcome to truer computing nirvana.
DSG Retail via their brand PC World & Curries aren’t going to close up and disappear, I hope not at least as they do sell Apple hardware as well. However DSG Retail will think twice about how many Windows laptop computers they buy for sale in future.
This recorded £20 Million makes me wonder about the true credibility of Microsoft. Didn’t MS report that Vista is selling like hot cakes? Not when such huge retailers announce losses like this.
Your Frustration. Our Fault.
I just helped a friend getting rid of Vista and reinstalling XP on his laptop because (his own words): “It was slow, nothing worked, it was annoying”
I have to confess it was my first Vista experience, and personally, anwering 6 question when inserting a USB drive it just ridiculous. Vista is plain awful.
Anway, I told my friend to get a Mac instead next time.
There was no rush because people didn’t think they needed Vista. They just kept on buying PCs like they used to, and PCs just happen to have Vista inflicted upon them nowadays. Joe Average obviously doesn’t seem to care, although many would like to have XP on their machines. And, apparently, many have come to think about choices. You know what that means.
“Our best IT guy says…”
I love that phrase! It has to be the best oxymoron I’ve ever seen.
Your IT guy is about protecting the IT department, not lowly users like you. Not even if you’re the CEO. Wake up and smell the snake oil he’s peddling.
This what happens when business doesn’t keep an eye to the maket and beleives it’s suppliers with out questing them… crap + less profits!
And then there there was only one… APPLE!
Here’s something else today in the UK…
The largest telecoms company in the UK is BT. Today it has a major alert on its email systems which have been falling over since this morning.
A client of mine rang and complained and their first response was to say it was Outlook and “BT DOES NOT SUPPORT MICROSOFT PRODUCTS”!
When this happens you know Microsoft -and probably BT too- are going to have major problems in the future…
the world is going to be ready for the taking by Apple.
To: Mr Steve “Monkey boy” Ballmer, how do you spell Vista? “E D S A L”. Keep up the good work.
Have a nice day.
Miss Alice Addertongue
@ Miss Alice:
I think you meant E-D-S-E-L…
Like we all know that the huge numbers of Vista shipments that Gates and Ballmer continue to spew out of their mouth are actually editions shipped with PC’s. The users are then forced to delete it and re-install XP. But MS is more than happy to add that number to their marketing spin.
@Miss Alice
“EDSAL” ? Do you mean EDSEL, in reference to Ford Motor companies looser of a car? If so it’s an appropriate analogy.
‘To: Mr Steve “Monkey boy” Ballmer, how do you spell Vista? “E D S A L”. Keep up the good work.’
Well, you know, like, that car, like, the one, like, the one that was, like, rubbish.
RE:
“Our best IT guy says…”
I love that phrase! It has to be the best oxymoron I’ve ever seen.
Your IT guy is about protecting the IT department, not lowly users like you.
Hey – You obviously have it all figured out!
I am in IT.
I support only Macs – over 350 of them in a large publishing business. I give my customers what they need to get the job done. That cannot be a free-for-all , but anything they need- they get. We do have to remember that the company bought that new 3.0 GHZ duo-core machine, not the user, so no, they can’t do anything they want to it, but they get anything they need to do their job. That is not always the easiest thing on the IT guys, but we are here to support our customer – the employee in production – if they can’t do their job, I don’t have one. Not all IT folks are roadblocks like you suggest!
Vista, the Edsel of the 21st century.
While I strongly favor Mac as a computer platform, it disturbs me that there are so many people building themselves up based on the weaknesses of others. Very lame. Very pathetic.
Show me the work you have done, not the failures of your competition!
I fail to see the humor in laughing at the dog while it is being kicked.
I tried to kick my dog once, slipped, fell, tore my back on a nail. Lesson learned. My kids laughed at me.
Yeah, but I have to snicker when I see the dog’s butt being sniffed.
If they lost 20 million pound is profit, that would have been 2-300 million pounds in sales, depending on profit percentage.
Your rut. Our revenue.
PC people are an odd bunch. I know some still using Winduz ME and see no reason to upgrade.
And 10 who bought new machines with Vista, and ditched it and loaded Winduz 95 or whatever it is.
Geesh.
I don’t know any Mac users running lower than Tiger.
Windows Vista.
Your hubris. Our schadenfreude.™
DSG Retail via their brand PC World & Curries aren’t going to close up and disappear, I hope not at least as they do sell Apple hardware as well. However DSG Retail will think twice about how many Windows laptop computers they buy for sale in future.
With the best will in the world, fsck ’em.
I loathe PC World and Currys with a passion beyond measure, to the point that I go there once a year just to marvel at how a company can present the public with a bunch of poorly-trained know-nothing bozos and still make a profit, largely from selling overpriced extended warranties whilst shagging the market for people like me who try to provide products with pre and post-sales service and a real relationship.
Sure, they sell some Apple products – with about as much enthusiasm as I visit the dentist or proctologist. Actually, my proctologist probably knows more about Apple products than the average member of DSG’s retail staff.
Just in case there is any doubt about my position; if every DSG store in the UK suddenly disappeared into a rip in the space-time continuum along with all of its employees, I’d dance down my local High St dressed in nothing but a PVC mini-skirt and a pair of flippers. Given that I’m a twenty-stone man in his mid-forties and it’s getting pretty chilly in South-East England, it’s probably a good thing that the likelihood of such an occurrence is pretty slim (which is more than can be said for me).
Just in case there is any doubt about my position; if every DSG store in the UK suddenly disappeared into a rip in the space-time continuum along with all of its employees, I’d dance down my local High St dressed in nothing but a PVC mini-skirt and a pair of flippers. Given that I’m a twenty-stone man in his mid-forties and it’s getting pretty chilly in South-East England, it’s probably a good thing that the likelihood of such an occurrence is pretty slim (which is more than can be said for me).
Best. Comment. Ever.
And probably a runner-up for Worst Mental Image, too.
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Quick, hand me the Mental Floss!
Sorry
Silly me the Microsoft Vista Spell check is having some problems here today. Sorry for any misunderstanding.
Cordially Yours
Miss Alice Addertongue
A friend of mine bought a reduced priced Toshiba Laptop (it was marked down to less then $300.00) with Vista Home Premium on it. You know Vista will not allow him to load any web page without a security prompt for each and every object on the page. He’s so frustrated with it he put it in his closet and when back to using his old laptop with XP.
The really funny part is the laptop has no restore CD and the HDD is SATA and his XP boot CD will not see the Hard drive because it doesn’t have the SATA drivers. And Toshiba don’t have any XP drivers for the laptop posted on their Website so he can’t even make an install boot CD for XP.
The place he bought it will not accept it as a return and they are telling him that they are prohibited by Toshiba and Microsoft from helping him put his fully legal copy of XP on it.
I had recommended that he buy a Mac and use Bootcamp to run his copy of Windows XP but the Toshiba was a lot cheaper. All I can say to him is you buy cheap you get cheap crappy products. I would have taken back just because of the annoying dead pixels in the LCD Panel.
He’s buying a MacBook Pro the day Leopard comes out.
“How can you lose something you never had.”
Especially how can Microsoft lose a profit one of it’s resellers thought they were going to make, but never did?
“To: Mr Steve “Monkey boy” Ballmer, how do you spell Vista? “E D S A L”. Keep up the good work.”
Except that the current installed base of Vista is now greater than the current installed base of all Mac OS versions ever created. Microsoft did in about 8 months what it took Apple 20 years to achieve.
OS X is more of a failure in the marketplace than Vista.
Actually, the Edsel would work when you hit the Start button….
They report GBP20m in lost PROFIT. Could the bean-counters out there work out what that is in lost SALES? Could it be around the GBP150 to 200m mark?
I used to be a bean-counter until I lost my balance…
To Alpha-Glucoseidase Inhibitor
Hmm. That’s and interesting notion: acquiring a trademark “Shadenfreude”.
[for those not familiar, it means taking joy in, usually, someone else’s failure or mistake.]
Mac Daily News has a lot of Shadenfreude for Microsoft, whether it be Zune or Vista. Sometimes Shadenfreude is deserved
“Actually, my proctologist probably knows more about Apple products than the average member of DSG’s retail staff.”
That’s because he’s spent a lot of time pulling Apple fanboys heads out of their asses.
This guy is clueless.
1. Micros** t got that marketshare through illegal and reprehensible business practices. It took 20 years to destroy the competition enough to be assured dominance. Apple does it the legitimate way; by producing the better product. THAT’S why Micros**t has not succeeded in putting them under.
2. You lose something you never had when your business makes sales projections and the actual sales fall short. Like when you buy 1000 paper cups to sell lemonade but only 20 people buy from your city-street corner stand. DSG made estimates based on Micros**t’s grandiose projections. As it turns out, word about crappy products gets out as fast as bad movies. And as it also turns out, the Vista lemonade looks like lemonade but tastes like urine.
3. Why the heck do prats like that post their blather on this, a MAC FAN SITE?
“Apple does it the legitimate way; by producing the better product.”
With 2% worldwide share, exactly what part of the PC business does Apple dominate?
Apple lost the OS battle exactly because Microsoft produced the product people chose to buy.
@MCCFR
When did you last go into a PC World? They now have Apple shops (mini Apple stores) in them with one or two actual Apple employed Staff running them. So Macs get the proper attention they deserve. I for one like this because you can directly compare the better retail model of Apple against a typical Box shifting PC company.
Related fresh story http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article3075708.ece[…] Kevin O’Byrne, DSG’s finance director, said that the company had over-estimated the demand for Vista by as much as 50,000 products, meaning the retailer had to slash prices and come up with big promotions – including a laptop giveaway for new Orange broadband customers – to stimulate demand. […]
Slashing the prices of 50,000 products (questimated average price £700) by 200 basis points (2%) equals £0.7 million.
You would need to slash the prices by 57% to get to £20 million. That could really be called a slash.
Giving away Ei Systems 3101 Windows XP laptops (with 256 Mb RAM; incompatible with Vista) to Orange broadband customers might not be the best way to stimulate Vista demand or to get rid of your Vista overstock.
I don’t believe DSG was doing charity and giving away laptops to Orange broadband subscribers, neither is Dell giving away laptops to customers signing a 24-month AOL broadband deal or Apple giving away iPods to customers signing an 18-month O2 mobile subscription. It’s called promotion.
Orange offering free contract-bundled laptops
http://tech.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1332634.php
“The £300+ GBP laptop in question is the Ei Systems 3101, which comes with a 15.4-inch widescreen display, an Intel Celeron processor, 256MB of RAM, a 40GB HDD, a DVD rewriter, and Windows XP Home, which is fairly par for the course for the total price.”
And in other news, a prominent UK electronics retailer comes in behind on sales. A Mac fanboy on staff suggests that Microsoft Windows Vista, rather than ineffective management of the company is the problem.