Windows 7 reaches the 100 million mark

by Bharat Suneja


Ten days after Windows 7’s October 22 launch, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said:

Certainly we’ve seen initial sales be fantastic. The first ten days were bigger than the first ten days of XP or Vista or any other Windows launch that we have done.

All Things Digital’s John Paczkowski responded with Well, What Did You Expect Him to Say? Windows 7 Is Selling Poorly?. Needless to say, similar pronouncements by Steve Jobs about iPhones/iPods/Macs/OS X would’ve resulted in a media frenzy of epic proportions.

During the first month, Windows 7 sprinted past the total market share of all versions of Apple’s OS X according to Internet metrics vendor Net Applications.

Six months after its launch, Windows 7 has sold more than 100 million copies, becoming the fastest selling OS ever. The OS claimed a 10% share of the PC market in February (Macs included). Not surprisingly, Windows revenues have grown 28% in the last quarter, as reported by CFO Peter Klein during last week’s earnings announcement.

Interestingly, Apple’s clever Mac v/s PC advertising seems to have run its course. “I’m a PC” is in! Along with the laptop hunter ads, it proves clever advertising isn’t the exclusive domain of one company. InfoWorld’s “Save XP” campaign has faded into oblivion (along with its infamous desktop computing expert, and his alterego).

Using Windows 7 is a pleasure. The user experience is top-notch. The performance is unquestionably better than its predecessors. Nobody’s having driver issues. Everything just works. And writing about Windows flaws doesn’t sell any magazines or boost pageviews for tech publications.

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

Anonymous April 28, 2010 at 1:54 am

This is a hugely misleading figure. As noted elsewhere, "sales" include all those new PCs which are shipped with Win7 without choice. *Many* of those PCs are immediately downgraded to XP due to poor take-up of Win7 within corporates so far. So yes, they may well have "sold" 100 million copies but I guarantee that the number actually in use is significantly less than that.

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Bharat Suneja April 28, 2010 at 2:10 am

@Anonymous: The number also doesn't include the other 100 million pirated copies in use around the world. :)

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Anonymous April 28, 2010 at 7:31 am

Nobody's having driver issues?
I know someone that needed to downgrade back to XP because Creative was to lazy to develop a proper driver for Windows 7. And the sound card is ~3 years old.

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Bharat Suneja April 28, 2010 at 8:58 am

@Anonymous from 7:31 AM: If you take the post literally, I suspect you'll find driver issues with all versions of Windows, including Windows XP. When compared to the overwhelming hue and cry about driver issues with Windows Vista, you'd have to agree the driver compatibility issues we've heard about (or not) with Windows 7 are fewer and far between.

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