Microsoft expects the latest Windows operating system, code-named Windows 7, to be released "sometime in the next year or so".
The software giant has been aiming to issue more regular updates of the operating system software that powers the majority of the world's PCs. Nevertheless, Bill Gates comments suggest that a successor to Vista might be released sooner than was generally expected. Microsoft has said it expects to release a new version of Windows approximately three years after the introduction of Vista in January 2007. The new versions of Windows will help revolutionise mobile phones and run the desk of the future, which would have a touch surface display allowing users to call up items using their hands.
Windows Vista is taking a while to catch on, with just 6.3 percent of enterprise users on the OS by the end of 2007. According to research most upgrades were from users of Windows 2000 which lost around six percent of users rather than XP, which Vista is intended to replace. Around a quarter of enterprises plan to upgrade to Vista in 2008 although companies may change plans and wait for the release of Windows 7.
Adoption of Microsoft's latest browser, Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), has also been sluggish, with just 30 percent of enterprise users on it 15 months after its launch. Slightly more than 70 percent of those surveyed were still using IE6 at the end of last year, despite the imminent arrival of a beta version of IE8. In contrast, Mozilla's Firefox 2.0 virtually replaced Firefox 1.5 the same period after its release. The proportion of users on Firefox actually doubled during 2007, with 18 percent using it at the end of the year. The proportion of users on all versions of IE fell by 10 percent. The survey quizzed more than 50,000 users from 2,300 large enterprises over the course of 2007.
