Microsoft could reconsider its decision to phase out its Windows XP operating system in June, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer reportedly said during a conference held at Louvain-La-Neuve University in Belgium.

The Redmond-based company has announced that starting June 30 will stop selling Windows XP to computer makers and retailers. However, the company will offer technical support until April 2009 and extended support until April 2014.

"XP will hit an end-of-life. We have announced one. If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter, but right now, we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments," said Ballmer quoted by Reuters.

Microsoft’s CEO explained that the people from the IT departments are very interested by Windows XP, because very often they are working with older machines, which are not suitable for Windows Vista.

Last week, during Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professionals in Seattle, CEO Steve Ballmer said that Windows Vista it’s “a work in progress”, but it’s “bigger than XP”.

As Ballmer said at the conference, there’s still work to be done on Vista: “A very important piece of work, and I think we did a lot of things right, and I think we have a lot of things we need to learn from,” he said.

He also noted that there are still a lot of customers using Windows XP, and at the same time, there are a lot of customers who opted for Windows Vista. “As long as those are both important options, we will be sensitive and we will listen and we will hear that,” Ballmer said.

Released in January 2007, Windows Vista was presented by Microsoft as an OS superior to Windows XP from all points f view, from features to security, but apparently the company has failed to impress the business customers.

Earlier this month, in a conference held in Las Vegas, two Gartner analysts has openly criticized Windows Vista in a report titled "Windows Is Collapsing: How What Comes Next Will Improve." Citing reasons such as Microsoft’s failure to innovate and introduce new features in its operating system, the complexity of Windows and the increasing migration of users to the OS-independent applications, Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald concluded that, "for Microsoft, its ecosystem and its customers, the situation is untenable."

“This is a large part of the reason [why] Windows Vista delivered primarily incremental improvements,” the analysts said. “Most users do not understand the benefits of Windows Vista or do not see Windows Vista as being better enough than Windows XP to make incurring the cost and pain of immigration worthwhile,” they added.

On April 4, Microsoft announced that Windows XP will be still available on the ultra-low-cost PCs until 30, 2010, because Windows Vista is too hardware-demanding.

Also, the Associated Press reported that some 160,000 users have signed a “Save Windows XP” online petition.