Windows 95 Shipments to Triple in 1996, According to Dataquest

Business Wire, May 15, 1996

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 15, 1996--As more companies begin to upgrade their computers to the Windows 95 operating system this year, Dataquest forecasts unit shipments of Microsoft's Windows 95 to reach 62.7 million units in 1996.

In 1995, 18.8 million units of Windows 95 were shipped. Dataquest anticipates continuous purchases of Windows 3.1 and a mixed corporate environment for some time.

"The abrupt decline of the Windows 95 upgrade cycle is expected to reverse itself temporarily in the second half of 1996 as organizations make their Windows NT versus Windows 95 decision," said Chris Le Tocq, director and principal analyst of Dataquest's Personal Computing Software program. "Of particular interest is the anticipated growth of NT shipments to corporate clients and even some consumer NT purchases."

MacOS unit shipments will continue to increase, but MacOS market share will actually decline through the rest of this decade. Windows 95 and Windows NT are the only two systems that are forecast to gain market share this year (see Table 1). -0-

Table 1
Worldwide PC Platform Operating System End-User Shipment Estimates
(Thousands of Units)
                                  1995           1996            1997
Total UNIX                         385            380             380
Windows NT                       2,212          8,096          24,398
Windows 3.1 (with DOS)          39,304          9,521           2,445
Windows 95, 96, 97...           18,759         62,701          63,432
DOS (without Windows)            3,320          1,162             407
OS/2                             1,712          1,822           1,888
NetWare (Server Licenses)          750            759             788
MacOS                            4,923          5,489           6,134
Proprietary and Others             309            262             222
Total                           71,675         90,193         100,095
Source: Dataquest (May 1996)-0-

An upcoming Dataquest report will provide full analysis and market share statistics of client/server operating system shipments. For more information about subscribing to Dataquest's Worldwide Operating System program, please call 800/419-DATA.

More information about Dataquest's programs, descriptions of recent research reports, and full text of press releases can be found on the Internet at http://www.dataquest.com.

Dataquest is a 25-year-old global market research and consulting company serving the high-technology and financial communities. The company provides worldwide market coverage on the semiconductor, computer systems and peripherals, communications, document management, software, and services sectors of the information technology industry. Dataquest is a Gartner Group Company.

CONTACT: Dataquest, San Jose

Tom McCall, 408/468-8312

tmccall@dataquest.com