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Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) 
is the obvious beneficiary of Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) latest stumble with its forthcoming operating system, Vista. This week the Redmond giant announced that the consumer version of Windows Vista will not be ready until January 2007, two months later than previously expected. The late rollout date will cause Microsoft to lose the all-important holiday shopping season.
In addition, Microsoft is reorganizing its Windows division, according to press reports, creating eight groups. The upheaval might lead to further delays -- or at least prompt consumers to wonder if it will.
Either way, it is good news for Apple.
"Any delay will be an opportunity for Apple to garner more sales away from Microsoft," Dawn D'Angelillo, vice president of marketing for Small Dog Electronics, an Apple Specialist, told MacNewsWorld.
Escape from Microsoft
Apple's core user base is known for its fanatical loyalty to the Mac . Window users like their PCs well enough, but Mac users would rather fight than switch.In recent years, though, Apple opened its arms to welcome disgruntled PC users to its fold. When malware aimed at Windows started to proliferate heavily, many former PC users fled to the safety of the Mac platform.
These users may not be diehard Mac fanatics, but they are happy to have escaped from the security worries that have become so prevalent in Microsoft's world.
That cycle may repeat itself, on a smaller scale, if Microsoft's Vista fumbling continues. "I would be hesitant to buy an operating system whose future direction was so uncertain," D'Angelillo said.
Small Window
The window of opportunity for Apple to leverage the delay and do something dramatic to realign marketshare is not very large, according to Roger Kay, principal of Endpoint Technologies Associates.
"Sure, if I were Apple I would throw US$10 million extra into an ad campaign or make snide comments about the importance of keeping to schedules at conferences," he told MacNewsWorld.
There is no time for anything beyond cementing its "smart company" image, though, he continued.
"We are only talking about a few months. Product planning cycles are not that long. There are three or four generations of products in the developmental pipeline, and while Apple could conceivably accelerate the schedule a little bit," Kay noted, "it couldn't do it enough to act opportunistically to introduce a new product or OS."
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