Windows 7 Reaches 15% Market Share

Microsoft finally backed their Windows 7 boasts up with numbers, and they�re quite impressive indeed.

Microsoft hadn�t provided exact sales numbers for Windows 7 until last night, when Microsoft CFO Peter Klein announced the sales figures at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference. Klein revealed that Windows 7 has sold a massive 90,000,000 copies.

Not bad for slightly over four months on sale.

In conjunction with Webmasterpro.de�s recently released market share numbers, these sales figures paint an incredibly positive picture for Microsoft. The Webmasterpro report pegs Windows 7 market share at approximately 14.7%, including mobile OS in overall market share. If you discount this mobile OS usage (from iPhone OS, Android, Symbian, Blackberry and WebOS), Windows 7 has a 15% market share.

While everyone knew that Windows 7 would be a commercial success because of Microsoft�s massive OEM program, most people didn�t think that it would experience such rapid adoption. In fact, preliminary reports suggested that Windows Vista�s rollout in 2007 was more successful than last year�s Windows 7 launch.

Market share data soon proved that assertion wrong, though. Windows 7 sales remained strong throughout the holiday season, and the OS surged past OSX in January. In fact, according to the same Webmasterpro data, Windows 7 already has more than half of Vista�s market share.

Interestingly, it doesn�t seem like users are upgrading from Vista in droves, though. Since 7�s launch in October, Vista market share has declined only a few points. It seems that the majority of Windows 7�s growth has come from XP users upgrading or junking old machines, because XP�s market share has declined by roughly 10% since 7�s release.

In the end, it represents a massive turnaround from 12 months ago. With Vista�s miserable performance in the marketplace and Mac OSX�s surging market share, many pundits crowed that Microsoft was on the decline. Now Microsoft looks like it�s returned to form. Steve Ballmer finally has something to get excited about.