14 DAY TRIAL // With over 100 million copies already sold worldwide, Windows 7 continues to get nothing but love from consumers. In fact, forecasts indicate that the latest iteration of the Windows client will hit the 300-million-sold-licenses milestone by the end of 2010. In this context, it should be no surprise that the impact of Windows 7 spans well beyond Redmond, to the entire software industry. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index survey, the release of Windows Vista’s successor boosted the customer satisfaction score for Microsoft, but also for the software industry as a whole.
“Customer satisfaction with all types of software for personal computers rises 1% to 76, an all-time high for the category. Microsoft improves 9% to tie the industry average at 76, also an all-time high for the largest software maker. After consumers struggled with its Windows Vista software, Microsoft’s release of the Windows 7 upgrade in the fall of 2009 came as a breath of fresh air. Microsoft has parlayed high volume sales of a better quality product into a big boost in customer satisfaction,” ACSI stated.
Windows 7 has kicked Microsoft’s customer satisfaction score above the 2006 pre-Vista high of 73. In 2007, as the Redmond company launched Vista, the level of satisfaction for the software giant’s clients dropped to 70, and as low as 69 the following year, as the company was pushing Windows XP to the periphery. In 2009, the score bounced back a tad to 70, as Microsoft was in the final stages of the Windows 7 development process, only to hit an all-time high of 76 at the start of 2010, as Windows 7 was crowned the fastest selling operating system in history.
“At the beginning of 2007, when Microsoft released Windows Vista, customer satisfaction plunged 4% to an ACSI score of 70, well below the industry average, where it remained for the next three years. In October 2009, Windows 7 was introduced. It took three weeks for the new software to reach a 4% market share compared with seven months for Windows Vista, as consumers were in a hurry to upgrade. By March 2010, more than 90 million Windows 7 licenses had been sold. Microsoft has achieved high-volume sales from a big boost in customer satisfaction—its ACSI score is Microsoft’s highest ever,” ACSI commented.
Windows 7 grew to a market share of 11.68% at the end of April 2010, a number that is roughly equivalent to 120 million sold copies. The operating system is quickly eating away at its main rivals, Vista and XP, and has eroded their respective market shares to 15.60% and 63.41%. At the same time, Windows 7 shows a strong momentum, which is only amplified by the general consensus that the platform doesn’t need SP1 to be ready for adoption, and of course, because of the users’ need to make Vista just a memory.
“The computer software industry is diverse, with hundreds of companies—many of them small—producing applications. Microsoft is, by far, the largest corporation in the industry. It is also the only entity large enough to be included in the ACSI, alongside an aggregated index for the rest of the industry. Customer satisfaction with computer software increased slightly from a year ago, up 1% to an ACSI score of 76—an all-time high. The aggregate of all other software makers leads, up 1% to 77, statistically tied with a much improved Microsoft, up 9% to a score of 76,” ACSI added.
Microsoft Windows 7 90-Day Eval VHD is available for download here.
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