14 DAY TRIAL // As part of its announcement regarding the financial results
for the second quarter of the financial year 2012, Microsoft unveiled that it managed to sell over 525 million Windows 7 licenses to date.
Windows 7 is the fastest selling client from Microsoft, but it is not yet the widest spread. Windows XP still leads the pack, though not for too long, it appears.
Windows 7 was made commercially available in October 2009 and sold over 175 million copies by the end of Microsoft’s financial year 2010, nine months later.
“Today is earnings day and Windows continues to have a strong showing. We announced a new milestone in Windows 7 sales - 175 million copies. This continues our record breaking pace of more than 7 copies sold per second,” Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc was saying at the time.
In the next 18 months, the Redmond-based software giant managed to sell over 350 million more copies, as the platform maintained a steady pick up rate.
At the end of the second quarter of its financial year 2012, Windows 7 is the second most used operating system in the world, and is on its way to take the crown from Windows XP in the coming months.
However, Microsoft announced a 6 percent decline in revenue for the Windows and Windows Live Division when compared to the same period the previous year.
In the wake of Windows 8’s arrival, sales of Windows 7 laptops are slowing down, affecting the platform’s overall performance around the world.
Of course, financial crisis in European countries and elsewhere might have been one of the causes for decreased Windows devices sales, combined with a steep increase in prices of hard disks due to the natural disaster in Thailand.
The Windows 8 hype is on the rise as well, though it should not affect too much Windows 7 sales at this point. After all, it is mainly a platform release packed with tablet-oriented features, and Microsoft has shown little improvements designed specifically for desktop PCs.