Microsoft: 350 million Windows 7 licenses sold in 18 months

Emil

Posts: 152   +0

Microsoft has announced that Windows 7 has sold more than 350 million licenses so far, meaning it is still the fastest-selling operating system. Windows 7 has been available to the masses for 18 months.

"We've done a lot in the last 18 months that improves upon the experience people have on their PCs with Windows 7," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. "We launched Windows Live Wave 4 (which included Windows Live Essentials 2011 and enhancements to Hotmail), released the first service pack for Windows 7, and recently launched Internet Explorer 9. And we're hard at work on further innovation for Windows. At CES this year we announced the next version of Windows will support System on a Chip (SoC) and last week at MIX11 we released the first platform preview to developers for Internet Explorer 10."

Windows 7 actually grabbed 20 percent of the market at the end of 2010. Between January and December 2010, Windows XP fell almost 10 percentage points to 56.72 percent market share, Windows Vista lost over five percentage points to 12.11 percent, and Windows 7 gained over 13 percentage points, pushing it to 20.87 percent.

In March 2011, Windows 7 had 24.17 percent of the market. By the end of this month, I would expect Windows 7 to pass the 25 percent market share mark, meaning one in four users would be using Microsoft's latest and greatest. Meanwhile, Windows Vista is on its way to falling below the 10 percent mark and Windows XP should soon drop below 50 percent.

Three months after release, Microsoft said more than 60 million Windows 7 licenses were sold. At the 15 month mark, the company had sold 300 million licenses. This means Microsoft was selling some 20 million licenses per month, although today's number means that sales have slowed down a tad. Still, back to school season is coming up, followed by the holiday shopping frenzy, so the company may be able to get that number back up.

If you're already on Windows 7, you should check out our guides for Microsoft's latest operating system. If you haven't upgraded to it yet, tell us why in the comments below.

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Guest said:
windows 7 sold about 7 licenses per second in the last 7x77 days
That hilarious and cool how close that is to reality.

7.4 licenses per second.
7x77.143 days or 7.013x77 days.
 
326 million Guest, but a cute (if not close) play on numbers nevertheless. 7.7 copies per second would be considerably closer (about 358 million), so give it a couple weeks and it'll be there. :)
 
While this makes no excuse for the relative failure of Vista, it just goes to show that it is very foolish in this day an age to state that a company will be an eternal failure based on one bad product, or an eternal success based on one good product.

Windows 8 *should* be a good product based on Windows 7 being a good product, but you can't guarantee that. They need to keep enough of the good stuff of Windows 7 in order to capitalize on that OS's successes, as shown above, but they also need to include enough new features to justify people purchasing them. Hopefully the second part will not cause any massive failures on what should be a good product.

I believe that they're shooting for the completion of the migration away from XP/Vista. While I doubt too many businesses that took the plunge with Windows 7 will go ahead and upgrade to 8, I think they are looking for those still loyal to the previous OS's (like Windows 95 at my prior employer), to finally get with the times and move to something more modern.
 
... Windows XP with more of 50 percent of the market... Its great !!!
... Who may need 8?
 
I haven't upgraded to it yet, because I don't need it... I have Windows XP and it meets all my needs and requirements ...

XP is a very efficient OS, it's fast, uses little memory and works very well on old hardware, even better on new hardware ...

I like it, I'm happy with XP.
 
Windows 7 is doing well, going to be intresting to see what happens when Windows Next / Windows 8 / Windows 2012or13 / Windows Panda (whatever you want to call it) hits the market
 
Can't see paying Microsoft more money to replace my slow & un-reliable,Vista. They make the mistakes and I'm supposed to pay them for it. Give me a break!
 
If those are all activated licenses, that's a seriously impressive figure for an OS which has been available for less than 2 years.
 
What are the odds on a major proportion of those 350 million being Windows XP installations with downgrade rights?
 
Microsoft will never be able to count the damage it done with the release of Vista OS which i think is one of the biggest direct reasons for Apple having such a large take up in the past 5 years add this with app stores in all the competing OS products and limited virus issues that leaves microsoft with some catching up to do in a very short time especially if chrome OS is any good I do think win 7 is probly the best OS microsoft has ever released and recommend anyone with XP to update there machine its like fitting a new engine in your car I think people forget XP is an old man how many people have software on there pc that is over 10 years old other than XP KEN S
 
The routine of having to update the operating system over and over is 30 years old. The operating system is irrelevant in the Internet age. If people can change their habits from the past and use Google's Apps and set the Chrome browser to igoogle.com they will discover in a number of weeks how computing should be for the next era. The ChromeOS is a perfect example of effortless computing---no app updates or viruses to worry about. The PC is just too difficult for the average user to maintain. It does not mean anything for Microsoft to say it sold 350 million licenses of Windows 7. Everyone knows that there is no choice when you buy a new PC---it comes with Windows preloaded---so the public is force fed Windows--like it or not. I have been beta testing the Google netbook with chrome OS on it and boy does it work well---this is how computing should be.
 
Im not a PC geek, and will not pretend to be one: OVER THE year,s I have bought a few computers and have up graded softwear because of changing the operation of my PC. And each time I did change my windows, most of the time the rest of my installed softwear stopped working inturn costing me more money. I use Window,s XP it works for me, Im not sure what enhansment you recieve in Like Vista or Windows 7. Remember Im not a geek: Ill play it safe Ill keep what I have:
 
Between my home and my business, I own about a dozen networked computers. Up to about 5 years ago, they all ran Windows XP. I never embraced Vista, and slowly have been converting my computers over to Ubuntu Linux. At this point, all but 1 machine now runs Ubuntu Linux, and that ones days are numbered as applications I needed for business move to the cloud. The difference in maintenance is like night and day. The Linux machines are very stable and the only problems I have ever had with them are purely hardware related (bad ram stick or failed power supply, etc.) I can never see myself moving back to Windows, it just takes too much of my time administering them to keep them healthy.
 
typical thing to say... what about Apple.... thats all they are... same things every year with one or two new things to add... and charge you the same price if not more... thats just retarded...

800 pound gorilla signing off..
 
To guest that wrote>
The routine of having to update the operating system over and over is 30 years old. The operating system is irrelevant in the Internet age. If people can change their habits from the past and use Google's Apps and set the Chrome browser to igoogle.com they will discover in a number of weeks how computing should be for the next era. The ChromeOS is a perfect example of effortless computing---no app updates or viruses to worry about. The PC is just too difficult for the average user to maintain. It does not mean anything for Microsoft to say it sold 350 million licenses of Windows 7. Everyone knows that there is no choice when you buy a new PC---it comes with Windows preloaded---so the public is force fed Windows--like it or not. I have been beta testing the Google netbook with chrome OS on it and boy does it work well---this is how computing should be.

I just have to ask where you stand if you are a gamer or need to do video editing type functions as far as desktop work cloud based systems are fine but will the chrome OS support these functions and will all these other future cloud based systems have the same issues in the future
 
They should make the Guest captcha require a dual core processor, weed these relics out of here.

Let me guess you're all still watching TV on a 13" CRT screen, and driving a 1992 Integra?
 
"it just takes too much of my time administering them to keep them healthy. "

Thank Goodness to you!, I'm sure the 95% rest of us that can handle such a "wild" horse as Windows can move on fine then eh? No what? Try an iPad, it;s even better than Ubuntu with font hinting and 3D games that won't make you scratch your eyes out.


"use Google's Apps and set the Chrome browser to igoogle.com they will discover in a number of weeks how computing should be for the next era."

If that's the future, I'll stick to the past thank you. I prefer being able to have control over what browser or browsers I use on my OS, and having local storage duplicated with client side cloud backup. Add in the tons of software that are available on PC (if I ever feel the need to downgrade my user experience, I can run chromeOS in a VM thanks)
 
I would have (reluctantly) upgraded to Windows 7 at some point, but now that Windows 8 is announced, I will probably wait and see what that delivers before leaving XP.
 
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