At just approximately a month after the general availability deadline of Windows 7, the operating system enjoys strong support from hardware and software companies worldwide. In fact, there are approximately 9,000 products that now feature the “Compatible with Windows 7” logo, Microsoft revealed at the Professional Developers Conference 2009 in Los Angeles earlier this week. In this regard, Windows 7 is definitely not a repeat of Windows Vista, as the readiness level of the ecosystem of hardware and software products reveals.

“The ecosystem around Windows is really amazing. Think about the install base - there are more than one billion users who use Windows. Those users want great applications and there are 3 million programmers building applications around the world and 90 percent of those developers target Windows. You could also look at our telemetry from the beta cycle which shows more than 800,000 unique applications (which includes multiple versions, 32/64 bit & languages) running on Windows 7 during the beta timeframe,” explained vice president of the Developer & Platform Evangelism (DPE) Group, Mark Relph.

According to Relph, the actual number of apps designed to run on the latest iteration of the Windows client is in the hundreds of thousands, Microsoft not knowing the exact figure. However, the company did reveal that in excess of 25,000 applications from builders in the Microsoft Partner Program came with a public statement of support of Windows Vista’s successor. This is of course, at just a few weeks following the official launch of Windows 7.

“Even more partners are striving for a higher quality bar by earning the “Compatible with Windows 7” logo. Today, 1700 hardware and software companies have delivered over 9,000 logo’d products. Many partners are also coming out with public statements of support. One way to measure that is the Windows 7 Compatibility Center which provides compatibility information and upgrade path for some of the most commonly used products on the market. We have had 2 million visitors to the site since its launch on October 20th. Today, there are over 25,000 products listed on the site with both 32-bit and 64-bit compatibility status and our database that is constantly growing,” Relph added.