More than 240m copies of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system have been sold in its first year, making it the fastest-selling consumer operating system ever, the company said on Thursday.
Many of those sales will have been to individuals buying new computers, as consumers traditionally upgrade more quickly than the businesses that make up the majority of Windows users. But about 89% of companies intend to install Windows 7 to replace earlier versions of Windows, said Tami Reller, chief financial officer of Microsoft's Windows unit.
The revised version of Windows, released as a successor to its Vista version from 2006 – which widely failed to persuade corporations to upgrade from its predecessors, Windows XP and Windows NT – has helped the company back towards record profits, despite a dip in 2009 and earlier this year in computer sales growth.
The company will announce the last quarter's financial results in a week's time, and they are expected to show strong growth compared with last year.
The software costs from $80 for a simple upgrade in the US – £55 in the UK – to $320 (£230 in the UK) for the top-of-the-range Ultimate edition, was launched a year ago this week to supersede Vista.
Although Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) OS X and Linux-based operating systems have won some market share in the past few years, Microsoft still controls 90% of the world's 1.4 billion or so personal computers, and it expects more customers to upgrade or switch to Windows 7.
For corporations, upgrading operating systems can be expensive because they need to ensure that the new version will work with their existing software and systems. The cost of upgrading often puts them off if there are not enough usability or security incentives in the new version.
Microsoft reported record sales of $62.5bn in the last fiscal year, up 7% from the year before, largely powered by Windows. The Windows unit is still Microsoft's core, providing more than one-quarter of overall sales and just over half of its overall profit, while its Office suite which runs on Windows provides more than half of its overall profits; losses in other areas, notably online services, reduce its net level.
Microsoft is expected to report higher fiscal first-quarter earnings next week, but Windows sales – which closely track PC sales – may disappoint investors slightly.
PC sales rose only 11% in the July-to-September period, according to research firm IDC, compared with 22% in the three months before that, as back-to-school shoppers appeared to hold off on big purchases.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/oct/21/microsoft-windows-7-sales
