It has long looked as if Windows95 would end up as an operating system for home computers only, and that the corporate world would at some stage go straight to whatever version of Windows NT was then current – with Cairo the best bet, and figures from Dataquest Inc suggest that that is exactly the scenario facing Microsoft Corp. The research house says that Windows95 is not gaining adherents as fast as it had previously forecast, and that users are sticking with Windows 3.1. It has therefore cut its forecast for Windows95 considerably, and now reckons about 45.7m copies will have shipped by the end of 1996, down 27% on the 58m it had been forecasting. And it had forecast that Windows 3.1 shipments would shrink to 9.5m in 1996, but now expects the number to be 20.9m copies. Dataquest still estimates that Windows95 will beat shipments of all other operating systems this year – including Windows 3.1. Apple Computer Inc is forecast to ship 5.4m copies of Mac OS, while Microsoft’s shipm ents of MS-DOS 6.22 are expected to fall to 2.0m this year from 4.2m in 1995. As for IBM Corp’s OS/2, the forecast advance is small – 1.9m copies this year, up from the 1.7m it shipped last year.
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