Windows 7 Tally Tops 300 Million Units Sold

Ed Tittel — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:57:06 +0000

While it’s not anywhere near on par with MacDonald’s just yet, Microsoft can now claim “more than 300 million copies of Windows 7 sold” since its general availability (GA) date on October 22, 2009. That was nearly sixteen months ago, so that puts the monthly run-rate at 18.75 million copies per month. This squares nicely with the 240 million figure that Microsoft released last October, on the first anniversary of that release date (at 20 million copies a month, it’s actually slightly over the average, but that’s what you’d expect on the tail end of a series like this one).

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This tidbit appeared in Microsoft’s Q2 FY11 Earnings Report, released yesterday, in the form of the following bulleted list item:

Microsoft announced it has now sold over 300 million Windows 7 licenses, and Windows 7 is now running on over 20% of Internet-connected PCs.

Mary Jo Foley also quotes some interesting analyst report items in a recent blog on these numbers. This includes the following items:

Forrester Research reported last November that 10% of business PCs in Europe and North America were running Windows 7.
At the same moment, 31% of new PCs purchased for business use came with Windows 7 pre-installed.
Forrester also predicts that by the end of 2011, that number will exceed 80% for all new business PCs sold.

Most analysts expect 2011 to be a big year for business Windows 7 adoptions, including lots of major enterprises and government organizations, with a vastly increased presence in SMB organizations as well. Does that mean the run rate will soon exceed 20 million units monthly? Probably — but we can do the math later, when MS issues its next quarterly report in about three more months.

Windows Enterprise Desktop » Windows 7 monthly run rate tops 20 million

Windows 7 Tally Tops 300 Million Units Sold