Microsoft delays consumer editions of Windows Vista until January 2007

Redmond (WA) - In what Microsoft called an update to its road map, doused with a liberal dose of the term "on track," the company announced today a delay to the release of its consumer editions of Windows Vista, until at least January 2007. The announcement was apparently timed after the close of stock markets, so as to reduce panic selling.

"Product quality and a great out-of-box experience have been two of our key drivers for Windows Vista," said co-president for platforms and services Jim Allchin in this afternoon’s statement, "and we are on track to deliver on both." Allchin leads the company’s business platforms, not the consumer side, so his words could be interpreted using a kind of Clintonian parsing, if you will : It depends on what he means by "we." Availability of Vista to business will apparently not be delayed, although today’s statement doesn’t make clear how it wouldn’t be, in some way, hampered. If Vista doesn’t have wide retail availability in November, then a great many businesses won’t have access to it, either ; on the other hand, if Vista is available through some channels in November, then there’s technically no reason why it wouldn’t be available to some consumers as well.

But one of the key distribution mechanisms for new operating systems is preloading on new machines ; and this will probably be the distribution channel that is most affected by the delay. "Because of the way businesses test and deploy software," this afternoon’s statement reads, "it makes sense for Microsoft volume licensing customers to receive Windows Vista starting in November of this year. Availability for consumers and on new PCs will follow in January." Of course, that all depends on how you parse the phrase "it makes sense ;" the statement does not explicitly say that volume-licensed customers of Vista Business and Vista Enterprise will receive Vista, just that it makes sense that they would. The subjunctive case is a dangerous thing to use in a press release.

Today’s statement included a show of support from a Hewlett-Packard executive in the Personal Systems group, although delaying Vista until after the holidays cannot be good news at all for the nation’s retailers. Not only will new PC sales slump, but sales of existing, Windows XP-endowed PCs are likely to fall dramatically - as history has proven at least once before - as consumers await the upheaval of retail product lines at the very start of the seasonal slump for electronics sales. A delay until after the holiday period is clearly the worst possible time for a delay to occur. What’s more, some customers are likely to have direct access to the very system they cannot purchase through retail channels, if indeed Microsoft’s volume licensing program does proceed on schedule. So they will know more intimately than before just what it is they’re anticipating, giving them even more reason to delay their purchase until after the holidays.

Another historical fact to take into account about post-holiday delays is that retailers and manufacturers will find it harder to justify price premiums, which means their margins could be reduced. Now I guess we know the answer to what was really on Bill Gates’ mind yesterday.