Windows XP sales pick up

Nothwithstanding the initial lukewarm response that Microsoft received for

Windows XP, the sales have gathered momentum among corporates of late, according

to company resellers in Mumbai. The growth is roughly put at 25-30 percent and

is mostly in volume licences.

There are talks in the market that in two months time, Microsoft will stop

shipping all licenses for Windows 98 and this will give a further push to XP

sales. However, Karthik Padmanabhan, Marketing Manager, Microsoft Corporation

India denies this. "Currently, we have no plans to stop shipping Windows 98

and Windows 2000 Professional and definitely not in the next two months,"

he asserts.

Windows XP sales in the first few months were negligible. The reason being

the high cost as compared to Windows 98SE and the confusion that prevailed over

the licensing technology. Another discouraging factor was the high hardware

requirements.

However, "PCs are now shipping with high configuration that supports XP,

so we can say that compatibility issues are solved," says GM Kamat,

Director of PC Center, a Microsoft reseller and certified solution aprovider.

"With the entry-level configuration of a PC coming to Pentium-4 with 128

MB RAM, users have now realized that, to make the fullest use of this

configuration, an OS like XP is required," says Premal Nanavati, Regional

Manager of Fiona Infosystems Ltd.

Kamat feels, "Earlier versions of Windows OS did well because corporates

had big IT budgets at that time. Windows XP was launched during the recession

and this affected the sales initially. But despite the tight IT budgets of

corporates, XP sales have picked up because they have realized the efficiency of

XP."

Surprisingly, nothing has been done on the price front to encourage sale of

Windows XP. Since the day it was launched prices have remained more or less

constant. In fact, it has gone up slightly because of the change in the dollar

price. A professional version of Windows XP cost Rs 9,000 as compared to just Rs

5,200 for Windows 98. The Home version of Windows XP comes cheaper at Rs 6,000,

but it lacks many features.

NELSON JOHNY