Windows 7 crushed Vista in early launch sales

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Matthew DeCarlo

Matthew DeCarlo

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By now, nearly everyone can agree that Windows 7 is at the very least a marginal improvement over Windows Vista, so its success comes as no surprise. According to research by NPD Group, Microsoft sold 234% more boxed versions of Windows 7 than it did Vista during the first couple days of sales. The research firm's data covers sales from October 18 to 24 and includes Windows 7 presales.

Windows 7 has also pulled in more cash thus far, with 82% greater revenue than Vista. NPD notes that a combination of early discounts on presales and a lack of promotional activity for Windows 7 Ultimate caused the lopsided revenue. Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade was the top selling SKU, with an average selling price of $76. Windows 7 Pro Upgrade followed in sales, with an average price of $147, and the $149 Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack came in third place.

Microsoft's new operating system experienced a 40% boost in market share, and has noticeably increased PC hardware sales.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/36841-windows-7-crushed-vista-in-early-launch-sales.html

 
Since Microsoft never gives out 'real' numbers, just percentages and such... We can never really be sure what they consider 'sales'. Are these sales directly to the consumer? Are they the copies bought by retail distribution channels FOR sale? I genuinely believe 7 has sold more copies than Vista, but maybe MS drummed up tons of retailer support and they all bought tons of copies expecting the 'wave' of customers.. but they never sold them. Just thinking out loud.

And some of the more obvious possible answers as to why include: Windows 7 IS an improvement over Vista and the positive press it has received as a result has no doubt fueled more confident buyers; MS had special deals like selling Windows 7 upgrades for $30-$50 and offered free upgrades from Vista if purchased recently; and of course, people have been waiting a long time since many of them probably 'skipped' Vista and feel this upgrade is obligatory.

However, it is no surprise they've sold 234% more copies, even though we don't really know if Vista sold 30 copies on the first day and Windows 7 sold 70 copies or if we're talking about 300,000 vs 700,000. :)

Also, something I find funny is the 234 number. Usually when I make up ridiculous numbers, I just roll my fingers over the number keys. It's awfully convenient that 2, 3 and 4 are consecutively placed. ;) Again, just thinking out loud...
 
Yea its really no surprise because everyone knew it was going to be a pretty good OS, from all the reviews and first hand experiences of the beta. I wouldn't say I'm a fan of Microsoft by any means but i hope this sells really well and does really well if nothing more then so the dude in the Mac commercials can shut up...Even if i loved macs I'd be annoyed by those stupid commercials by now.
 
win 7 is what vista should have been, I really wish MS would offer a bigger discount for teh win7.
 
It's kinda funny, when you think about it. Microsoft made tons of money releasing a ho-hum problem plagued Vista, then is making even more money soon after by releasing a much better fixed version with none of the original problems. And their biggest selling point for Win7? It's way better than Vista! Pretty hilarious when you created your own bad guy to pitch against in the marketing of the new product.

As PUTALE said, Win7 is what Vista should have been. And it probably would have been, if Microsoft hadn't been in a hurry to get a product out to generate revenue.
 
Vrmithrax said:
As PUTALE said, Win7 is what Vista should have been. And it probably would have been, if Microsoft hadn't been in a hurry to get a product out to generate revenue.
Click to expand...
Consider that Vista arrived late 2006, XP in late 2001. That's 5 years (or just a bit more), which is the longest time Microsoft ever went between OS releases. So sure, it might have waited longer, but it was already very late to the game.

Not to mention that if it shipped Windows 7 without Vista, it wouldn't have been considered such a good OS. Sure, 7 is a lot better than Vista, but it's only thanks to Vista that stable Windows 7 drivers are available, that software is largely compatible, things that made Vista's launch such a failure.

Vista also allowed Microsoft to learn the lessons. It's hard to release a new product and make it perfect. Vista was very ambitious, late as a result, and not ready (IMO it was ready at SP1). But Microsoft didn't foresee netbooks, its DX10 API was untested as were many new features. Having Vista on the market allowed seeing how things are used, where users are having problems, and fixing that.

So yes, it would have been nice to have Windows 7 to begin with, but it was impossible, and it's not a result of any conspiracy on Microsoft's part.
 
It would be interesting if we could see the comparison between torrented copies of Vista vs 7... my guess is it would be a lot more than 234% :)
 
Real numbers would be of more interest.. but suffice to say the only way w7 could not improve on the disaster of vista would be to re-release Windows ME aka "More Errors".
 
Regardless of their...interesting numbers, I think we all can agree that the launch and actual operation of the OS was/is much better received than Vista. Which begs the question;

"Hey Microsoft, did you learn anything?"

:p
 
It's no surprise as much as they patched vista it always felt heavy, cluttered and unfinished. I always felt some error was happening even tho nothing wrong was going on. Win 7 is a huge improvement from Vista and is finally bringing back love to Microsoft's OS and now you can stop buying macs....i mean right now lol
 
After the failure of vista, and the need to replace that 10ish year old operating system, it had no other way to be.
 
I like how this article calls Windows 7 a, "marginal improvement over Windows Vista" when it's more than just a "marginal improvement". Windows 7 is more than just Vista done right, it's probably the best operating system Microsoft have released.

Let's look at the pluses here:

1. It runs extremely well on outdated hardware. When I say outdated, I mean 5 year old machines run Windows 7 with ease, without the fancy graphics of course. It runs on an Aspire One with satisfactory performance.

2. Reading and writing to hard disks and usb drives has been optimised. Windows XP, and especially Windows Vista suffered from slow file copying even on really high RPM and expensive hard drives. It's still not great, but it's a massive improvement.

3. Networking is WAY easier. It's easy to get Windows 7 networked with Windows Vista and Windows XP, no messing around required.

4. Backwards compatibility with Windows XP virtualisation.

There are far more optimisations, features and tweaks that make Windows 7 more than it would have been if Vista were done right the first time. They actually listened to Beta Tester feedback this time around as well, something they should have done a long time ago.

2009 has seen Microsoft starting to hit some wins. Bing market share, successful Windows 7 launch and people starting to realise that Apple is just as monopolistic if not more than Microsoft are nowadays with it faulted policies and patent fetishes.
 
I just upgraded from Vista Ultimate to Win 7 Ultimate and I have to say that the process couldn't have been easier...nor could it have been any more pleasant. Microsoft definately had this OS release done right this time.
 
Pretty big jump, but it only reflects retail sales of Windows which I would assume is just a small percentage of total Windows sales. We need to get some numbers on corporate sales and computers shipped to Win 7 pre-installed to get the real picture of how sales are going. Plus raw numbers instead of percentages would be much use interesting.
 
Marginal improvement?

Beggars said:
I like how this article calls Windows 7 a, "marginal improvement over Windows Vista" when it's more than just a "marginal improvement".
Click to expand...
The article actually says 'at least a marginal improvement'.

It does nothing to actually quantify the improvements made itself . Rather, it infers that there are other people who think it is only a marginal improvement. And those people certainly do exist.
 
Wow that is a huge amount of sales. Just proves what a complete flop Vista was! If only Microsoft had got it right first time a lot more people wouldn't have gone to Apple/Linux. Great job on Windows 7 though!
 
Sincerely, you you had wait the release of Windows 7 to buy a new computer would you say :"Oh nooooo, I want my XP back" ?
No, so Windows 7 will be the next OS you will use because..... you have no choice.
If you don't want to use a 10 years old OS (I mean XP), you are not going to use Vista (everybody say it was crap, even if they did not test it) because there is Windows 7 now.

Now do you think everybody is buying Windows 7 because it is really the best OS on the market or because there is no really other choices ?

And if you just buy a new computer with Windows 7, are you going to tell everybody that you want your XP back if you think that Windows 7 does not worth the money you paid ?

So Windows 7 has to be a success like XP was after Windows Me... even if it is not perfect.
And I am sure we are going to have a lot of SP because like XP was, Windows 7 is not perfect. A perfect OS would be one we would not see. We would just see the UI and it is not really the OS.
 
I really hope this "rush" holds out. I can use a new "stable" OS. I will still dual boot once i install Win7, just in case. You cant be to careful with Microsoft.
 
Ah percentages. How deceiving they can be! Let's say they sold 100,000 copies of Vista in that time period. That means they sold 334,000 copies of 7. Pretty respectable. But if they sold only 1000 copies of Vista, they sold only 3,340 copies of 7. I'd like to see hard numbers.
 
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