According to Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer, the Redmond company has sold 400 million Windows 7 licenses since the product was first released in October 2009, which is equal to about 7 copies a second being sold, ironically.
Steve Ballmer announced the figure today at the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference. Brandon LeBlanc, Communications Manager at Microsoft, later expressed the companies great satisfaction with today’s news on the official Windows blog:
Our previous statement of 7 copies of Windows 7 sold a second continues to hold true. We continue to see excellent momentum for Windows 7
Windows 7’s success shouldn’t be surprising. Since it was first announced almost 3 years ago, the product has received praises by enthusiasts and users alike, who were pleased at the product’s stability and improved usability. The product was later shipped on October 22 2009 and sold over 240 million licenses within a year, making it one of Microsoft’s most successful products to date.
Microsoft has managed to walk a fine line with Windows 7, by delivering targeted improvements over its predecessor, Windows Vista, while maintaining compatibility with older applications and hardware almost intact. Among the new features built into the operating system, there’s a new taskbar, often dubbed as the Superbar, which allows applications to be easily “pinned” to it, and Home Groups, which allows files to be shared effortlessly across a local network with little setup. Windows 7 has also focused on improving the system’s performance over Vista, and it delivered.
Windows 7’s success was contributed to by a vigorous ad campaign conducted by Microsoft around the product’s launch. The ads depicted basic computer users enthusiastically claiming that Windows 7 was “their idea”, while showing off the product’s new consumer-oriented features.
Microsoft also pointed out today that Internet Explorer 9, released earlier this year, is being steadily adopted by Windows users and is growing at a respectable pace, and is in use by 17% of Windows PCs worldwide. The new version of Internet Explorer 9 has done a great deal to modernize Internet Explorer’s aging browser engine and user interface, which is now much more fresh and appealing. Yet, many still feel that the browser still has long ways to go before being comparable to newer competitors, such as Firefox and Chrome.
While Windows 7 was built on listening to customer feedback, Windows 8 will allegedly be one of Microsoft’s riskiest bet yet. We’ll soon find out how well Windows 8’s new interface and touch-screen-oriented features will be received by users.
(via Blogging Windows)
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