Ballmer: Windows 7 Sales 'Fantastic'

Excitable Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer actually had something to be excited about at yesterday's shareholder meeting, where he announced that Windows 7 sales are "fantastic."

"Since launch, we've already sold twice as many units of Windows 7 than any other operating system we've ever launched in a comparable time," Ballmer said.

Speaking Thursday at the company's annual meeting, Ballmer said Windows 7 sales are "fantastic," but provided no numbers to support his claim. The Wall Street Journal helpfully puts the number at 40 million copies sold since the new operating system's Oct. 22 release.

That estimate is based on Vista having sold 20 million copies in its first month, the Journal said.

"Windows 7 is the simply best PC operating system we have ever built," Ballmer said. "It enables people to do more of what they want to do more easily and more quickly, and customers are responding."

Ballmer had previously described Japanese sales of Windows 7 using the same term, "fantastic."

Verification of Ballmer's claim will come as PC manufacturers report their sales, which will give us some measure of how many copies of Windows 7 are being sold with new hardware. Wide customer acceptance of Windows 7 should help the hardware industry recover from the recession.

Dell has already said Windows 7 has sparked demand for new PCs among business customers.

Also worth watching will be the impact netbook sales have on Windows 7 revenue, as the mini-notebooks generate less revenue for Microsoft on a per-unit basis than their larger cousins, the standard-sized laptop PC.

During the meeting, shareholders also approved Microsoft's executive compensation program, called "say on pay." Under the new program, shareholders will be asked to approve compensation for the company's "named executives" once every three years. They did so casting 98 percent of their votes in favor, the company said.

The company also approved a nine-member board of directions, one member of which is former Borland exec Reed Hastings, who is better known these days as a co-founder and chairman/CEO of Netflix, Inc.

The irony of an ex-Borland staffer being on Microsoft's board is not lost on those who remember the Borland/Microsoft battles of the mid-1990s.

David Coursey tweets as @techinciter and can be contacted via his Web site.