Win 7 Moves 240 Million Copies in First year (1 Viewer)

[mattCR]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/21/windows-7-moves-240-million-copies-in-its-first-year/

Can you believe it's only been a year since Windows 7 hit the market? So much has happened in the interim, we could swear it's been a decade. Of course, Microsoft is celebrating Windows 7's birthday the best way it knows how: sales numbers. Turns out the little OS has done pretty well for itself, with 240 million licenses sold, giving it a 17 percent global operating system market share, and making it a healthy chunk of the 1.2 billion Windows PCs out there. As for the slow-to-adopt businesses out there, Microsoft still has some work to do, but it says 90 percent of companies have upgraded or "started their move" to 7. So, we've got the cold hard facts out of the way, any precious, personal, heartfelt memories of your time with the OS you'd like to share? We've got dibs on Steve Ballmer dropping by the Engadget Show on launch week.

Moving 240M units in a year far exceeds their market expectations, and easily makes it the largest launch in their history.

 

[Parker Clack]

I think what is different this time though is that instead of wanting to get the latest Microsoft offering people upgraded to get rid of Vista. Personally I didn't have any issues with Vista but almost everyone else I talked said they "hated" Vista and when 7 came along they jumped. And when the reviews from the Vista users that upgraded to 7 started coming in with lots of accolades that prompted more and more to take the leap themselves.


That number reflects ~240 million disgruntled users of Vista.

 

[KeithAP]

As I understand, the retail upgrade market is a small percentage of the licenses sold. The bulk of them come from people/businesses buying new computers with Windows preinstalled. Add to that the PC market is on a real upswing compared to the previous couple of years and you get some impressive numbers.


I never had a problem with Vista myself although I didn't install it until SP1 hit. Windows 7 is definitely a better OS than Vista but make no mistake, it is just a tweaked Vista. Vista went through the teething pains of getting proper driver and application support, and not long after things started going smoothly, along comes Windows 7 to reap the benefits.


I have wondered if this was Microsoft's plan all along. MS knew the only way to get manufacturers to update their drivers and apps in a timely manner was to release the OS to consumers and they knew there would be problems until everything was updated. So they release Vista, let it take the heat. They could have released Windows 7 as a service pack, but Vista's reputation had been permanently tarnished so they release it as a separate product and collect some upgrade fees while they are at.


-Keith

 

[Al.Anderson]

I just read a trade journal article the other day (which I can't find again now, of course) that said the 240 million figure is not as significant as it might at first seem. It appears that the bulk of the sales is from two areas, the first being a huge backlog of commercial upgrades. This was due to business IT shops postponing upgrades given Vista's problems. The second part of the 240 sales figure is from new sales, which has also shown an uptick recently. But even there, an appreciable number of these licences were never put in use, they were downgraded to XP after received by the customer (you had to buy win7, but were allowed to downgrade to XP). A very small portion of the 240 million is from consumer upgrade.

Part of the analyst's conclusion is that MS is in danger of going the IBM route, becoming more of a supplier to industry rather than consumers (this was tied to the idea that mobile and computing appliances were going to get much bigger and that MS is not doing well moving their desktop OS toward the mobile arena).

 

[mattCR]

Originally Posted by Al.Anderson

I just read a trade journal article the other day (which I can't find again now, of course) that said the 240 million figure is not as significant as it might at first seem. It appears that the bulk of the sales is from two areas, the first being a huge backlog of commercial upgrades. This was due to business IT shops postponing upgrades given Vista's problems. The second part of the 240 sales figure is from new sales, which has also shown an uptick recently. But even there, an appreciable number of these licences were never put in use, they were downgraded to XP after received by the customer (you had to buy win7, but were allowed to downgrade to XP). A very small portion of the 240 million is from consumer upgrade.

Part of the analyst's conclusion is that MS is in danger of going the IBM route, becoming more of a supplier to industry rather than consumers (this was tied to the idea that mobile and computing appliances were going to get much bigger and that MS is not doing well moving their desktop OS toward the mobile arena).

It will be interesting to see what happens post Oct22, where "downgrade" licenses are no longer legit, and WindowsXP is pulled from the shelves, and, per the partner agreement, should not be sold.

 

[Parker Clack]

Also, I would think that as Microsoft stops providing upgrades for XP that more and more people are going to be buying 7.