GartnerGroup's Dataquest Says Windows 98 to Capture 58 Percent of Operating System Shipments in 1998

Business Wire, June 17, 1998

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 17, 1998--Worldwide operating system shipments are projected to reach 110 million units in 1998, with Windows 98 leading the market with 56.7 million unit shipments, according to Dataquest, a unit of Gartner Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:GART). While new shipments for Windows 98 will be strong, Dataquest analysts said they anticipate modest to low interest in Windows 98 upgrades, with Windows 98 upgrade shipments totaling 5.5 million units.

"This is the last hurrah for the current architecture, the next version of Microsoft's consumer OS, Windows 2000, will be based on an NT kernel," said Chris Le Tocq, director and principal analyst for Dataquest's Personal Computing Software Worldwide program. "The business user transition from Windows 95 to NT Workstation is gradually emerging. Most new systems are shipping with 32 MB. With the rapid decline in DRAM expense, the investment in a Windows NT system begins to look substantially similar to the investment in a Windows 98 system."

Dataquest projects Microsoft to have a 95 percent share of all operating system shipments on all computers worldwide by 1999 (see Table 1). -0-

Table 1

Worldwide Operating System New Shipments for All Platforms
(Thousands of Units)

                            1997          1998          1999

Windows NT                 7,204        13,954        25,846
Windows 3.1 (with DOS)     7,850         1,484           536
Windows 95                70,556        31,321             0
Windows 98                     0        56,684        95,539
Others                     8,054         7,158         6,949
Total                     93,664       110,601       128,870
Source: Dataquest (June 1998)

Additional information on this market is available in the Dataquest Perspective titled "All Platform Operating Systems Sales History and Forecast Summary, April 1998." This report summarizes worldwide shipments of operating systems for all platforms and identifies server versus client or standalone share.

This report is produced by Dataquest's Personal Computing Software Worldwide program. This program provides comprehensive analysis and statistics of all major PC software applications--in both consumer and business segments--running under the Windows, Macintosh, OS/2, DOS, Java, and NT operating platforms. Additional information on this program is available on Dataquest's Web site at http://www.dataquest.com/dq/static/about/programs/pcsw-ww.html.>To purchase the report or subscribe to this program, please call 800-419 -DATA or 408-468-8009. 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.

GartnerGroup's Dataquest is the recognized leader in providing the high-technology and financial communities with market intelligence for the semiconductor, computer systems and peripherals, communications, document management, software, and services sectors of the global information technology industry.

As the world's leading authority on IT, GartnerGroup provides clients with a wide range of products and services in the areas of IT advisory services, measurement, research, decision support, analysis, consulting and training. Founded in 1979, with headquarters in Stamford, Conn., GartnerGroup is at the center of a global community with 11,086 client organizations served by analysts in 80 locations worldwide. Additional information about the company is available on the Internet at http://www.gartner.com.

   CONTACT: Dataquest
             Tom McCall, 408/468-8312
             tom.mccall@dataquest.com