With 450 Million Licenses Sold, Windows 7 Overtakes XP

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 15 Sep 2011

The focus at the BUILD Conference fell on the upcoming Windows 8 operating system (OS). President of the Windows Division at Microsoft, Steven Sinofsky said in the keynote that the OS will have a new Metro interface, that it will feature apps that can communicate with one another, and that it will be better than Windows 7 in every way - performance, security, privacy and system reliability.

Speaking of Windows 7, Steven Sinofsky said in his keynote speech that to date, more than 450 million Windows 7 licenses have been sold all over the world. Breaking down the numbers, it means that 7 licenses were sold every second and about 650,000 licenses were sold every day. The numbers once again back Microsoft’s claim that Windows 7 is the fastest selling OS in history.

Following the release of Windows 7 in October 2009, Microsoft made public info on how well the OS is doing, info that showed just what a big commercial success Windows 7 is. Here’s a quick reminder:
January 2010 – 60 million licenses sold
March 2010 – 90 million licenses sold
April 2010 – 100 million licenses sold
June 2010 – 150 million licenses sold
October 2010 – 240 million licenses sold
January 2011 – 300 million licenses sold
April 2011 – 350 million licenses sold.
July 2011 – 400 million licenses sold.
September 2011 – 450 million licenses sold.

Steven Sinofsky shared another interesting Windows 7-related fact during the keynote at the BUILD Conference, mainly that since Windows 7 was rolled out to the public, more than 1,500 product changes were implemented in the OS. Sinofsky pointed out that these were not security updates, actual product changes meant to make the OS better.

An interesting fact was shared about Windows XP as well. Sinofsky claimed that Windows 7 has finally overtaken XP, that there are now more users on Windows 7 than on Windows XP.


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