Ballmer: sales have been 'fantastic' Photograph: Chris Graythen/Getty Images
Early sales of Windows 7 suggest that shoppers are switching toMicrosoft's new operating system in their droves, shrugging off the cloud cast by its predecessor, Windows Vista.
Analysis of sales figures by research firm NPD Group suggested that sales of Windows 7 in the United States were 234% higher than when Vista launched in January 2007.
"In a slow environment for packaged software Windows 7 brought a large number of customers into the software aisles"," said Stephen Baker, a vice president at NPD. "Vista had a slight advantage at launch, as January traditionally has a bigger sales footprint than October."
The positive news was backed up by comments yesterday from Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer, who said that sales had been "fantastic".
High interest in the launch was already clear when Windows 7 hit shops on October 22nd, with Amazon UK saying that the software was thebiggest pre-order in the its history, outstripping phenomenally popular books such as Harry Potter and Dan Brown.
Ballmer also suggested that the surge of interest in Windows 7 had breathed some life into the troubled PC market.
"People don't buy operating systems, they buy computers with operating systems on them," he told an audience in Japan.
NPD's figures suggested that the system's launch had created an initial 49% surge in computer sales compared to the same point last year - a figure that is lower than the equivalent boost created by the release of Vista, though the disparity could be partly attributed to the slowdown in computer sales caused by the recession.
Figures from another research firm, IDC, suggested that computer sales had increased by 2.3% in the third quarter of the year - but most industry executives expect that number to increase significantly as customers consider buying new Windows 7 PCs in the run-up to Christmas.
Whatever the case, the numbers will come as a relief to Microsoft, which recently announced another problematic financial quarter and announced that it was cutting 800 jobs earlier this week.
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