Windows 7 fastest selling OS of all time
Microsoft has sold 90 million copies of Windows 7 to date since its release last October. This makes the latest Windows operating system the fastest selling OS of all time. But there’s more to come. Much more, in fact, as Microsoft expects to sell a total of 300 million copies of Windows 7 in 2010.
We already knew Windows 7 was doing well, after a particularly positive and trouble-free Oct. 22, 2009 launch. But the speed at which consumers have moved over to the new operating system has exceeded even the most optimistic projections.
According to Information Week, Microsoft CFO Peter Klein revealed the latest figures at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, & Telecom Conference in San Francisco earlier this week. He stated that 90 million copies of Windows 7 have so far been sold, which he describes as “terrific momentum.” And 90 million copies sold in just four months is undoubtedly a result likely to have put a smile on Steve Ballmer’s face.
But the company is expecting even greater things over the next two years. Reuters reports that Microsoft COO Kevin Turner expects to sell 300 million copies of Windows 7 in 2010 as enterprise customers start to upgrade from XP and Vista. During a talk at the London School of Economics he said:
Heading into 2010 and 2011, we’re starting to see incredible interest from our enterprise customers to start deployments of Windows 7. The interest has been very high, and we’re now having conversations with the majority of our enterprise customers who are making plans to deploy Windows 7.
There will be an enterprise refresh cycle. It’s not precisely certain when that will happen and how fast it will happen, but as we’ve been saying constantly for the last several quarters, we expect it to happen this calendar year and go into the next calendar year, and that will be a really good thing.
Windows 8 is expected to be released in 2012 and in many ways Windows 7 is merely a stop-gap before that operating system appears. While 7 is built on the Vista architecture and is managing to rebuild consumers’ confidence in Microsoft OS’s, Windows 8 is likely to be a completely different animal. And with Windows 7 doing so well, Microsoft now has the perfect platform from which to make Windows 8 as good as it possibly can be.
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