Office 2007: 70 million not served
It sounded too good to be true. And it turns out it was.
A report last week that Microsoft had sold 70 million copies of Office 2007 since the product was released to manufacturing turned out to be wrong. Officials with Microsoft France allegedly told press last week that Microsoft had sold 70 million copies of Office 2007 since Microsoft made the product available at the end of 2006.
I asked Microsoft whether that number -- which seemed awfully high, given that Windows Vista just hit the 60-million-copies-sold mark in July -- was accurate. Last week, officials declined to comment on Office 2007 sales. But in responding to IBM's unveiling of a new Microsoft Office competitor known as IBM Lotus Symphony, Microsoft shed more light on that 70 million figure.
In response to IBM's September 18 announcement, Microsoft released the following comment from Jacob Jaffe, Director of Microsoft Office.
"Customers continue to tell us that our solutions deliver the ease of use, reliability and security that they need. This is validated by the strong adoption and usage seen by Microsoft Office having sold more than 71 million licenses in just the last Microsoft fiscal year. Our long history in meeting the complex needs of enterprise customers, a partner ecosystem that has grown 43% on the Office platform since last year and our current and future investments in the software + services arena will deliver even more flexibility to customers."
At the Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting at the end of July, Microsoft Business President Jeff Raikes told attendees that Microsoft had sold 70 million licenses of all versions of Office during fiscal 2007, the Microsoft spokesperson further elaborated this week.
What percentage of the 70 million copies sold between July 1, 2006, and June 30, 2007, were Office 2007? I'd be a good percent of them were, but Microsoft won't comment....
Speaking of Office, Microsoft has shipped Service Pack (SP) 3 for Office 2003. The latest SP disables "Fast Save" for security reasons, according to Microsoft.