How Microsoft can get over the Vista delay for the holidays

Michael Gartenberg | May 04, 2006, 10:39 AM

One of the big issues around the Vista delay was the notion that Microsoft was going to miss the holiday season which would be an issue for OEMs and retailers who potentially will lose sales as customers wait for Vista to ship in January. It's clear that at some point, Microsoft will offer a free upgrade to Vista for new XP systems purchased after a certain date but I don't think that's going to be enough. If Microsoft really wants to make sure that holiday sales don't suffer, they're going to need to do more than that.

I'd humbly suggest they consider that for a brief period of time, perhaps from Black Friday thorugh Christmas that they offer not only a free copy of Vista (and make that Vista Premium please) but also a copy of Office 12. That's the type of value proposition that could easily make consumers get off the fence and not wait until Jan or later to buy. It could even be a special version of Office 12, perhaps just Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, similar to today's student and teacher edition. It's a fairly short period in time, so it's not something that will really hurt Office sales, spurs customer adoption of both Vista and Office (and gives consumers a good application to show off Vista) and most importantly, creates a strong motivation for consumers NOT to wait but to get the added value over that four week or so period.