by Playfuls Staff |
17th September 2006
At a briefing in Brussels,
Belgium, Microsoft and International
Data Corporation (IDC) announced details of a study into the expected economic
impact of Microsoft Windows Vista in six key European markets- Denmark,
France, Germany, Poland,
Spain and the UK. [more] IDC gave details of how the new
Microsoft operating system will be a major driver of revenue and employment
creation for more than 150,000 IT companies in the six countries, which
collectively account for 65 per cent of IT spend in the European Economic Zone.
According to IDC, the availability of Windows Vista will generate revenues of
more than euro 32 billion for these companies in 2007. In addition, the new
operating system will sustain and support over 1 million jobs - approximately
20 per cent of all IT employment in the six countries - and create an
additional 50,000 new positions.
According to the IDC report,
which was commissioned by Microsoft, Windows Vista will be installed on more
than 30 million computers in the six countries researched in its first year of
availability, and 105 million worldwide. This installed base will provide a
market for application developers, systems integrators and other companies that
produce, sell or distribute products or services running on Windows Vista.
IDC's research predicts that for every euro of revenue Microsoft makes,
companies within the IT ecosystem will, on average, will make over euro 13.
Jean-Philippe Courtois, president
of Microsoft International, said, "In the grand scheme of things, IDC
forecasts that Windows Vista will account for only 1 per cent of the euro 214
billion the six countries in the study will spend on IT in 2007, and around 5
per cent of the packaged software spend. However, the economic opportunity
Windows Vista creates for small and large companies across the region is
clearly much more significant."
‘The ripple effect of Windows
Vista's economic impact will spread beyond the IT industry. "Based on
standard software and services industry ratios for spending on product
development, marketing and training, Microsoft's partners will be investing
over euro 4.8 billion, between now and the end of 2007, in readying their products
and services," says IDC's Marcel Warmerdam.
Imasoft ApS is typical of many of
the independent software vendors (ISVs) that help make up the 150,000 company
strong IT ecosystem in the six countries researched by IDC. Based in Fakse, Denmark,
the company employs five people. For the past four years its developers have
been working on CrimeSceneNet -- a product based on Windows Vista that will
enable police and law-enforcement agencies to create panoramic, 3-D, digital
representations of real crime scenes, enabling forensic and other evidence to
be plotted accurately and investigation scenarios to be analysed.
Seemage Inc, a French software
developer based in Nice, develops solutions for the product design, engineering
and technical illustration industries, and is also planning a version of its
Seemage system, based on Windows Vista technology. "Our vision of 3-D
product information being available 'everyware' will be taken to the next level
with Windows Vista. We anticipate that, ultimately, most of our end users will
view, manage, manipulate and leverage 3-D digital design data via via Seemage
running on Windows Vista," said Chris Williams, CEO of Seemage.
This study is the latest in a
series of studies conducted by IDC since 2002 into the economic impact of IT,
software, and the Microsoft ecosystem and partner community on local economies.
