Microsoft Sold 240 Million Windows 7 Licenses In 1 Year

Windows, Microsoft’s ubiquitous operating system, sits firmly in place.

One year after launch, licenses for the successor of Windows Vista, Windows 7, have gone over the counter no less than 240 million times.

As Microsoft points out, that makes it the fastest selling operating system in history, which is not super surprising when you consider how many were clamoring to upgrade from Vista, and XP for that matter.

Still, that’s nearly a quarter billion licenses, folks.

Microsoft says that, as of September 2010, Windows 7 was running on 93% of new consumer PCs, although we’re left guessing as to what constitutes a “new consumer PC” here.

In contrast, Windows 7 ‘only’ boasts 17% global OS market share (according to Net Applications), which means a lot of computers are still running XP and Vista.

On the bright side, growth seems to be accelerating. Last June, Microsoft announced that they had sold 150 million copies of Windows 7, so that translates to sales of about 90 million licenses in the past 5 months. A lot would have to go wrong for Microsoft not to hit 300 million copies sold by year’s end.

On a personal note, 99% of my online activities, work and play, are done on a Windows 7 PC.

It’s a genuine pleasure to use, period.