Microsoft this afternoon claimed its best-ever
quarter for revenue courtesy of Windows 7. The company's revenue jumped
14 percent year-over-year to just over $19.02 billion owing directly to
selling 60 million copies of the new OS release and helped it bounce
back from three consecutive drops in revenue during the other
quarters of 2009. Its net income also jumped 60 percent versus late
2008 to top $6.66 billion.
The number was partly padded by $1.71
billion in deferred revenues, as pre-sales of Windows 7 both to
upgraders and to PC builders weren't counted as part of the summer
results. Even transferring the difference, however, the quarter would
still have represented a significant increase versus the prior season.
Microsoft touts the 60 million copies as the highest-ever for any
operating system in a single quarter and significantly outpaces Windows
Vista. The earlier release took four months to reach 40 million from its late
January 2007 debut and continued slowing down for much of its lifespan
as Vista developed a reputation for poor hardware support,
incompatibility and overly frequent security prompts.
The performance was also clouded by poor results in a pair of
categories. Although Microsoft estimates Windows PC sales to home users
were up 20 percent, business sales were almost flat as many companies
took a wait-and-see approach or had compatibility problems that wouldn't
be solved by Windows 7. Also, the Entertainment and Devices group that
handles the Xbox and Zune dropped in revenues by almost 11 percent as
it shipped only 5.2 million Xbox 360s, a 13 percent drop compared to the
end of 2008.
It's not known how many Zune HD players were sold. The fall was the
first full quarter of sales for the touchscreen device.
Microsoft's Windows 7 sales don't reflect the entire PC industry as some
of its sales were still copies of Windows XP attached to older netbooks
and nettops.