Jan 7, 2011 14:51 GMT  ·  By

While it certainly doesn’t come close to Windows 7 in terms of uptake, Office 2010 is indeed enjoying its fair share of market success, having earned the crown of Microsoft’s fastest selling productivity suite to date. At the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, Microsoft revealed that it’s close to selling 16 million copies of Office 2010.

This is quite impressive, especially considering that Office 2010 was released just half a year ago, with the general availability deadline on June 15th, 2010.

At CES 2011, the software giant made public the first statistics related to Office 2010 sales since the productivity suite hit store shelves, and apparently, the company is selling about 1 license each second.

Considering that on January 15th it will be 6 months since Office 2010’s launch, it’s quite easy to do the math and guess the number of copies pushed to customers.

Microsoft did not offer a specific figure for Office 2010 sales, as it did for Windows 7, but the hint offered is sufficient to at least approximate the adoption rate.

“We've been getting a lot of questions about the uptake of Office 2010 and the Office Web Apps, so first and foremost, let's look at the numbers.

•More than 30 million people use the Office Web Apps to view, edit, and share Office documents from anywhere with a browser and an internet connection.

•Office 2010 now ranks as the fastest-selling consumer version of Office in history, with approximately one copy of Office 2010 sold worldwide every second. •For the 8th year in a row, Microsoft Office was the number one selling software product in U.S. retail measured by dollar volume, outpacing games and security software,” Microsoft’s Holly Thomas stated. (emphasis added)

It’s worth to note that Office Web Apps, the online components of the desktop productivity suite, designed to complement Office 2010 is also attracting its fair share of users.

“Without a doubt, we're delighted by the numbers that show Office 2010's success thus far, but it's our customers and their success that put the icing on the cake,” Thomas said.

Office Home and Business 2010 RTM Build 14.0.4760.1000 is available for download here.

Office Home and Student 2010 RTM Build 14.0.4760.1000 is available for download here.

Office Professional 2010 RTM Build 14.0.4760.1000 is available for download here.