Windows 7 Usage Surpasses XP’s, Almost 450 Million Sold Copies

Microsoft has sold almost 450 million copies of Windows 7, the company confirmed officially at the start of this week, just a day ahead of its Windows 8-centric BUILD conference.

Last time the software giant shared sale statistics for Windows Vista’s successor it was in mid-July 2011.

At that time, Microsoft revealed that it had passed the 400 million sold licenses mark for the operating system, and that the operating system was selling three times as fast as Windows XP.

Approximately another 50 million Windows 7 copies shipped to customers since July 2011, and it looks possible that the number of sold licenses could hit 600 million by the end of this year.

According to Steven Sinofsky. President, Windows and Windows Live Division, less and less users are still clinging to Windows XP.

In fact, as of last Thursday, September 8, Windows 7 usage surpassed that of Windows XP, according to the Windows boss.

Sinofsky explained that the data comes from Microsoft’s Windows Update infrastructure and involves the number of Windows 7 machines connecting to WU in comparison to that of Windows XP.

Windows 7 has also evolved considerably since the RTM version was introduced back in 2009.

The software giant introduced no less than 1,502 changes into Windows 7. Those are all non-security product code improvements.

Microsoft has unveiled Windows 8 to the world today. Windows 7’s successor still has to spend some time in development, but early adopters can download Windows 8 Developer Preview Build 8102 Milestone 3 (M3) as of this week.

Yes, this is an M3 release and not the full Beta as some were expecting, but it’s still not recommended for end users or for deployment into production. Windows 8 Developer Preview Build 8102 M3 should only be used in testing environments.