14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 7 is now officially the second most popular operating system worldwide, after Windows XP. On July 22nd, 2010, the Redmond company announced record revenue for the third quarter of Fiscal Year 2010, no less than $16.04 billion, and credited the amount to the success of Windows 7. According to the software giant, the latest iteration of the Windows client has already sold in excess of 175 million copies around the world. When making the figure public, Brandon LeBlanc, Windows Communications Manager on the Windows Client Communications Team, delivered another interesting piece of information.
Windows 7 has surpassed Windows Vista in terms of Market share, and is getting close and closer to Windows XP. “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. And as of today – Windows 7 is now running on more than 16% of all PCs worldwide,” LeBlanc stated.
According to statistics made public by Net Applications, at the end of June 2010, Windows 7 accounted for a market share of 13.70%, while Vista was at 14.68%. Windows 7 managed to keep its strong momentum, with Microsoft noting that 7 copies of the OS are being sold every second, and it appears that it has not nudged Vista off of the runner up position on the operating system market. According to the data provided by the software giant, Windows 7 is now running on more computers than Windows Vista was at the end of the past month.
However, Vista’s share of the market has also been diminishing consistently since Windows 7 hit store shelves in October 2009. It was only a matter of time before Vista would slide in the shadow of its successor. Of course, at the same time, Windows 7 is in the shadow of Windows XP. The operating system Microsoft released in 2001 still accounted for 62.43% of the market at the end of June. Even at 16%, Windows 7 still has a long way to go before it will be able to challenge XP for the position of no. 1 OS.
Windows 7 RTM Enterprise 90-Day Evaluation is available for download here.
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