Windows Vista shipments hit 60 million units

Redmond (WA) – During its financial analyst meeting held yesterday, Microsoft announced that Windows Vista shipments have crossed the 60 million mark.

According to chief operating officer, more than 60 million packages of Windows Vista have shipped in the past six months, selling at a rate of 10 million units per month and “eclipsing Apple’s entire installed base in 5 weeks of shipments.” Turner mentioned that a total of 42 million Windows PCs are currently covered by volume licensing agreements.

Of course, the claim of 60 million sold units within six months isn’t entirely true, as this number includes sales from the firm’s Express Upgrade program, which went into effect on October 26 of last year and was available until March 15 of this year. So, the sell-through of Vista is more like 6.7 million units per month.

Turner once noted that Vista has proven to me more secure than its predecessor, which had to deal with 25 severe vulnerabilities during its first 180 days on the market, while Vista was hit by only 12 critical security problems. The executive also said that Vista caused 21% fewer support calls than Windows XP within its first six months of availability.

The company claims that Windows Vista is now compatible with 98% of “hardware known in the Windows ecosystem today” - roughly 2.1 million different products.

Microsoft believes that the overall installed base of Windows users will pass 1 billion within the current fiscal year (FY 2008). He attributed the substantial revenue growth in the Windows group - +14% or +$1.9 billion in FY2007 over FY 2006 - to the impact of Windows Vista. One major contributor to this revenue growth is the fact that more people are spending more money on their operating system : 68% of users have purchased the “Premium” version of Vista, Turner said.