[Infowarrior] - MS license statistics FUD?

[Richard Forno]

Just because a license for a product is "sold" doesn't mean it's being used
--- MS could sell millions of licenses to a PC OEM for preinstallation
bundling (so yes, they do record the sale and that does means something to
MS) ... But just because a license is SOLD, that does not mean the licensed
product actually is being USED.

I know of at least 6 people with licensed copies of Windows Vista on nice
new computers who are running XP instead.  So saying you've sold 71 million
licenses of a product doesn't mean you've got 71 million active users of
your product --- but nobody ever asks that question!    That 71 million
claim is a meaningless metric, IMHO.

--rf


http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=42679

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In response to IBM¹s September 18 announcement, Microsoft released the
following comment from Jacob Jaffe, Director of Microsoft Office.

    ³Customers continue to tell us that our solutions deliver the ease of
use, reliability and security that they need. This is validated by the
strong adoption and usage seen by Microsoft Office having sold more than 71
million licenses in just the last Microsoft fiscal year. Our long history in
meeting the complex needs of enterprise customers, a partner ecosystem that
has grown 43% on the Office platform since last year and our current and
future investments in the software + services arena will deliver even more
flexibility to customers.²