Windows 7 Outsells Vista By 234% In Opening Days Of Sales

November 6th, 2009 | admin | 24 views | 0 Comments

One might say it’s not that big a deal, considering we are just talking about Windows Vista. Still, according to market research firm the NPD Group, WIndows 7 outsold Windows Vista in terms of retail boxed sales by 234%.

In terms of revenue, 7 didn’t achieve that strong a percentage increase. This is attributed to the pre-order discounts that Microsoft offered, as well as the fact that unlike Vista, Microsoft didn’t spend the effort to push Windows 7 Ultimate.

It’s likely that the bad publicity over Windows Vista Ultimate, which never provided the so-called Extras Microsoft had promised (or at least, never any that were worth the extra cash), influenced Microsoft in terms of marketing Windows 7 Ultimate.

At any rate, that combination led to Windows 7 revenue that was only 82% higher than Windows Vista. That’s still an excellent amount when compared to Vista.

Of course, as I’ve previously recommended, there’s little reason to upgrade your PC if you’re already running Vista, particularly when Microsoft has these sorts of upgrade issues.

While boxed software is one way for Windows 7 to be sold, the majority of Microsoft OSes are shipped with PC hardware. In terms of that, the recession may be having an impact, as NPD noted that while PC sales growth was higher than any week during the back-to-school third quarter (normally high volume), it wasn’t as strong as growth during the Vista launch.

Total Windows PCs were up 49% in units year-over-year and were up 95% percent over the week prior to launch, an impressive bump. However, PC sales growth during the Vista launch soared 68% over the prior year’s sales and 170% over the week preceding the launch. Remember, however, that was pre-recession. As such, Windows 7 PC sales were down 6% compared to Windows Vista PC sales during the Vista launch week.

Still, this has to be encouraging to Microsoft. The proof, however, will be in the end user experience as consumers use the OS for a decent length of time. That question will be open for some time.