Ahead of the general availability of its latest Windows client, Microsoft was shy of making public anything but reserved expectations for the operating system. The tactic was synonymous with the company doing a 180 on how it had managed the forecasts around the commercial success of Windows Vista back in late 2006, early 2007. While, at the time, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer was boasting sales of approximately 200 million Vista licenses in the operating system’s two years on the market, the company kept rather mum when it came down to estimating how Windows 7 would perform. The silence is now over, with Ballmer revealing that Windows 7 is seeing fantastic sales in Japan, outpacing both Windows Vista and Windows XP.

"We've had a great response here in Japan," Ballmer noted at a Tokyo news conference, according to ComputerWorld. "Certainly we've seen initial sales be fantastic. The first ten days were bigger than the first ten days of XP or Vista or any other Windows launch that we have done."

So far, the software giant has said almost nothing about Windows 7 sales at a global level, and, in fact, this is the first mention that the product is a success, albeit limited to the Japanese market, and even though Microsoft has yet to translate the success into actual figures. On November 4th, while in Taipei, Microsoft executives noted that the latest version of Windows was doing well. "We've heard positive things from our partners," Steve Guggenheimer, vice president for OEM sales at Microsoft, said via IDG News Service.

According to usage statistics from Net Applications, Windows 7 has already passed the 3% mark in terms of market share at just two weeks since it hit the shelves. Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22nd, 2009, and to the general public on October 22nd.