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Windows Vista License Sales Top 180 Million

We were scratching our heads during Corporate Vice President Brad Brooks' speech at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference earlier this month. For all Brooks' talk about Microsoft drawing a "line in the sand" for critics of Vista to cross, there were no fruits of the new $300 million ad campaign on display and no hard data about Vista adoption.

Microsoft addressed part of that with a hard figure on Vista during its quarterly earnings call last week. The news: Sales of Vista licenses have exceeded 180 million licenses.

On its face, that's a really good number. For a quick recap, Microsoft announced 20 million units sold in the first month (March 26, 2007), 40 million units sold in the first 100 days (May 15, 2007), more than 60 million licenses sold "as of the summer" of 2007 (Sept. 27, 2007) and 100 million licenses sold in its first year (Jan. 30, 2008). So we're talking 80 million units in the first half of calendar 2008, compared with roughly 50 million in the first half of 2007.

Take away downgrade rights, and I'm not so sure the number is meaningful other than as a measure of Windows' market power in general. But there it is, duly reported.

Posted by Scott Bekker on July 22, 2008


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