14 DAY TRIAL // While the market performance delivered by Windows Vista in the operating system's first week of commercial availability is lagging behind that of Windows XP, the 2007 Microsoft Office System is hands down outperforming its predecessor. Research company NPD found that Office 2007, following January 30, 2007, reeked in more than double the revenue produced by Office 2003 back in October 2003.
Office 2007 generating 106.3 % more dollars for retail outlets compared to Office 2003 is illustrative of the unit sales. In this context, data made available revealed that sales increased by no less than 108.6% for Office 2007 over the shipments for Office 2003. NPD reported that the 106.3% boost in dollar volume comes on the background of a 1.1% in average selling price.
"With almost zero advertising and marketing until the Jan. 30 retail launch, I expected U.S. commercial license sales of Office 2007 to be significantly below the sales of the previous version," commented Chris Swenson, NPD's software industry analysis director. "They weren't. Sales of Office 2007 were significantly better. This was probably one of the most successful retail launches of Microsoft Office ever."
NPD centralized Office 2007 retail data from a variety of locations including Amazon.com Inc., Best Buy Co. and Target Corp. However, the research company revealed that it did not receive any details from the Wal-Mart, the largest global retailer, and that as such the data may be conservative.
The only version of office 2007 that failed to rise up to expectations is the Ultimate edition. NPD explained that the poor performance of Office 2007 Ultimate, in comparison with the other editions, could be correlated with Microsoft not marketing the real value of the Ultimate version to the consumer channel.