Microsoft’s new Windows Vista OS won’t boost PC sales very much this year because operating systems usually face slow, gradual adoption, the head of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing said Thursday.TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip maker, believes PC sales growth in 2007 will be similar to last year, despite the hype surrounding the launch of Vista. The company is considered an IT industry bellwether due to the wide variety of chips it manufactures. TSMC also does its own market research in order to decide how much it should spend on new factories.Enterprise users are normally slower to adopt new operating systems, said Rick Tsai, president and chief executive officer of TSMC. His company will be no exception, as it will not be an early Vista adopter, he said. Consumers are more likely to buy a new OS like Vista in the early days after its launch, he added.The Vista issue was raised after TSMC executives said the global chip industry is suffering amid a glut in mobile phone and PC chips. TSMC reported its worst quarterly net profit in a year and a half on Thursday, as the chip glut worsened and orders fell. The current quarter, January to March, will be even worse, TSMC executives said, but it will mark the bottom of the chip industry downturn. TSMC’s fourth-quarter net profit dropped 18 percent compared to the same time a year earlier, to new Taiwanese $27.91 billion (US$856.7 million as of Dec. 31, the last day of the period reported). It was the chip maker’s worst performance since the third quarter of 2005, when its net profit hit NT$24.49 billion. -Dan Nystedt, IDG News Service (Taipei Bureau)Related Link: Microsoft Windows Vista: The OS Has LandedCheck out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage. Related content brandpost Resilient data backup and recovery is critical to enterprise success As global data volumes rise, business must prioritize their resiliency strategies. By Neal Weinberg Jun 01, 2023 4 mins Security brandpost Democratizing HPC with multicloud to accelerate engineering innovations Cloud for HPC is facilitating broader access to high performance computing and accelerating innovations and opportunities for all types of organizations. By Tanya O'Hara Jun 01, 2023 6 mins Multi Cloud brandpost Survey: Marketers embrace AI at expense of metaverse investments Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) has quickly rocked the world of marketing. Sitecore polled B2B marketers on their perceptions of GAI. Here’s what they said. By Dave O’Flanagan, Sitecore Jun 01, 2023 4 mins Artificial Intelligence news Zendesk to lay off another 8% of its staff, cites macroeconomic issues The new tranche of layoffs comes just six months after the company let go of 300 staffers and hired a new CEO in order to navigate its operations through macroeconomic distress. By Anirban Ghoshal Jun 01, 2023 3 mins CRM Systems IT Jobs Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe