As part of the quarterly earnings announcement today from Microsoft, they revealed that more than 300 million Windows 7 licences have been sold. Naturally this includes a combination of home and business users, but its clear, Windows 7 has arrived.
Windows 7 was released to PC manufacturers like Dell and HP on July 22nd, 2009 and the general public on October 22nd, 2009. This means Microsoft sold the 300 million Win7 licences have been sold in just 1 year, 6 months and 6 days. The sales number is also up from 240 million in October last year and now accounts for 20 of all internet connected PCs.
While some businesses have been slow to make the move to implement Windows 7, but its clear Windows 7 is most certainly a hit across the board. On almost a weekly basis now, we see press announcements from companies or government departments upgrading hundreds or even thousands of seats.
On the home front, its been some time since you could actually purchase a PC with anything other than Windows7, so its unsurprising the number is growing rapidly. The computer upgrade cycle of 2-4 years is definitely hitting its stride right now, so expect the strong sales to continue.
With Windows 8 approaching quickly, scheduled for a beta later this year and release in 201, should those who haven’t already made the move skip Win7 all together ? Given a lot of businesses skipped the PR nightmare that was Windows Vista, that would mean in 2012, you could be sitting in front of an operating system that’s more than 10 years old.
Personally I think businesses should make the move to Windows 7, it has an amazing collection of features and improvements over XP that I simply can’t live without. Windows 8 is likely to build on the same platform as Windows 7, meaning most of the applications that run on Win7 will continue to run on Win8. Alternatively if Microsoft do make dramatic changes, virtualisation is likely to allow legacy applications transparently to end-users.
New software is released every day that requires Windows 7 as a bare minimum, meaning XP users are out in the cold. That reason, pared with the power savings available should be reason enough to update.
Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is due any day now, with leaked builds making their way to bit torrent.
More information @ All About Microsoft