Users prefer Windows XP than Vista

BANGALORE, INDIA: While it's no major news that Windows dominates the desktop OS market, the interesting thing is in the version. The winner of Users' Choice award for 2009 is Windows XP, and not Vista, even though the latter has been around for a long time.

XP enjoyed the highest current ownership amongst our respondents, had the highest top of mind recall, and even the highest loyalty relative to other OS brands. The top of mind recall for Windows Vista was pretty low at just 5 percent. On a relative scale though, Vista enjoyed the highest percentage of other brand owners shifting in to it.

However, amongst our respondents, the Linux variants didn't have sufficient votes for us to pass any judgment. Coming back to Windows, XP led the way across all the industries we covered in our survey this time. Windows Vista however, was the strongest in the services industry, followed by communication and media industry as well as the process manufacturing industries.

Windows XP enjoyed the highest brand loyalty amongst its existing owners at 55 percent. Windows Vista on the other hand, enjoyed only 31 percent loyal owners, and the remaining 69 percent said they were not sure which OS to shift to or had no plans of shifting. Maybe things will change now that Windows 7 has been launched. Let's see how well does the new OS fare next year.