Brian Gammage

I am Annette’s Jump, Research Director in Gartner’s WW Client Computing Team, and I’m today’s guest blogger.  I cover client operating systems on PCs (Desktop PCs, Mobile PCs and Mini-Notebooks) and I am the lead analyst behind the worldwide operating system forecast. My other areas of expertise are the mature and emerging PC markets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Gartner does not expect that Windows 7’s release in October 2009 will have a major boost on WW PC sales in the fourth quarter of this year. Sales should be in line with what we have seen during Windows Vista introduction in the market in early 2007. It is true that we might see slightly weaker sales in early October, followed by slightly stronger sales in November, but for the fourth quarter overall we believe that the net impact on WW PC sales will be very minimal.

Additionally, Microsoft is offering an upgrade program to Windows 7 from Vista for PCs sold starting 26th June 2009. That should help to avoid any major decline in PC sales in the 1-2 months prior to new OS launch. However, users will have to do the upgrade themselves and it is not something that most consumers or small businesses without IT departments would have done before. Additionally, upgrading the client OS when you already have some personal data on a PC is not that straight forward and definitely more complicated on a Windows PC vs. Mac OS.

Windows 7, with its polished user nterface and several new consumer-friendly features, will likely reduce the gap in perception between Windows and Mac OS. However, Apple is able to innovate on a shorter time frame and they already released their update for the Mac OS X – Snow Leopard – in September 2009. The upgradeability of Mac OS is still easier and significantly more users do that on Macs vs. PCs. To encourage more Mac users to upgrade to Snow Leopard and to attract some of the traditional PC users Apple also announced big reductions in upgrade price to only $29. In its announced upgrade pricing Microsoft is planning to reduce by approximately 10% (depending on the market) the upgrade price of Home premium version, so the upgrade cost to Windows 7 will range from $119.99 to $219.99.

Additionally, Microsoft announced that for a limited period of time in June and July in a few selected countries users were able to pre-order Windows 7 at nearly 50 percent discount ($49.99 for Windows 7 Home Premium and $99.99 for Windows 7 Professional). The later is likely to be Microsoft response to Apple announcement of the special upgrade price to next Mac OS, but even with the special pre-order program Windows 7 upgrade pricing will be much higher vs. Mac OS upgrade price for ‘Snow Leopard’. Furthermore the upgrade prices in Europe are significantly higher than those in the US, which will mean that fewer European consumers will buy the upgrade to Windows 7.