October 6th, 2009

Ballmer: Microsoft never recovered from Vista blow

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 5:02 am

Categories: Microsoft, Windows 7

Tags: Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows Vista (Longhorn), Microsoft Windows 7, Operating Systems, Microsoft Windows, Software, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

As Microsoft prepares for the release of Windows 7, CEO Steve Ballmer admits that the company’s reputation has never recovered from the launch of Vista.

This from the Telegraph:

Mr Ballmer said: “We got some uneven reception when [Vista] first launched in large part because we made some design decisions to improve security at the expense of compatibility. I don’t think from a word-of-mouth perspective we ever recovered from that.”

There you have it. Confirmation of what most of us knew already … that the Vista name was mud.

Turning bad news into good though, Ballmer now believes that there’s “pent up demand” for new gear:

“I’d be hopeful that we see a bit more rapid pick-up - particularly people who are upgrading the software without touching the hardware - than maybe we have in years past.”

This is the rub. The people that Windows 7 really needs to appeal to are those millions of entrenched XP users who don’t see a reason to switch OSes. These people are going to be much harder to convince to switch than people who’ve already made the switch to Vista.