14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has over 240 million reasons to celebrate the one year anniversary of Windows 7.
In excess of 240 million copies of Windows 7 have been sold in the first year since the operating system hit store shelves.
And it appears that the last Windows client is showing no signs of stopping its incredible run so far. Softpedia readers already know that Windows 7 passed the 175 million sold licenses milestone in mid-2010, and just a few months later, the software giant reveals that an additional 65 million copies were pushed to customers worldwide.
Earlier today I estimated that over 200 million copies of Windows 7 had been offered to users, and that in fact the OS was right on track to hitting the 300 million sold licenses by the end of this year.
It looks like my prediction was right on the money, with the fastest selling operating system in history continuing to enjoy a strong uptake rate, both with end users and with enterprise customers.
“As of September, Windows 7 was running on 93% of new consumer PCs and has over 17% global OS market share (according to Net Applications as of October 1st),” revealed Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc.
“There is an amazing array of great PCs out on the market today. Six months after launch, 100% (over 18,000) of our OEM partners were selling Windows 7 PCs versus 70% for Windows Vista PCs at a comparable time period.
“And there is an incredible ecosystem of products – software and hardware – that work great with Windows 7 too.”
And just in case that you weren’t paying attention, Windows 7 has been enhanced ahead of the delivery of Service Pack 1.
Microsoft offered updates designed to boost performance, reliability and application compatibility through Windows Update.
At the same time, the software giant offered the Windows Live Essentials 2011 suite of rich clients designed to push Windows 7 into the Cloud.
At the same time, customers can upgrade their browsing experience by installing the Internet Explorer 9 Beta released in mid-September 2010.
“Over the last year, we saw that customer satisfaction for Microsoft had outpaced Apple in February and in May the American Customer Satisfaction Index report showed a jump in customer satisfaction for Microsoft in 2010 over the previous year,” LeBlanc added.
“Both of these attribute Windows 7 as the key factor for improved customer satisfaction for Microsoft. Customers are very happy with Windows 7.
“Businesses are getting on the Windows 7 train. Microsoft News Center has a fantastic article giving an overview of Windows 7 for business and includes perspectives from analysts and Microsoft executives highlighting several Windows 7 customers.”
Windows 7 was released to manufacturing in the summer of 2009 and hit General Availability on October 22nd, 2009, almost a year ago.
And with 240 million licenses sold since, Microsoft certainly has more than just a few reasons to celebrate.
Windows 7 RTM Enterprise 90-Day Evaluation is available for download here.