Windows Vista hits the 60-million-copies-sold milestone

I predicted Microsoft would hit the 60-million-copies-sold mark with Windows Vista around July 1. On July 26, at its annual Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM), Microsoft officials acknowledged the company has hit that milestone.

At the end of the fist 100 days of sales, at the start of May, Microsoft said it had sold 40 million copies of its client operating system.

With Vista, "We've eclipsed the entire Apple installed base in the first five months of sales," Kevin Turner, Microsoft's Chief Operating Officer, told attendees of FAM.

Turner shared other new Vista statistics on July 26, including:

• 2.1 million devices now work with Vista
• More than 11,000 Vista-logo'd devices are now on the market
• 2,000 applications now have earned the Windows Vista logos
• More than 70 business-focused enterprise applications have been made Vista-compatible since the product launched in late January
• More than 42 million Vista seats are now covered under volume licensing deals. (However, "Windows Volume Licensing annuity penetration" is only at 19 percent currently, Turner admitted. Microsoft is pushing hard to grow this number, he said.)
• Over the next three years, Microsoft expects more than half of Windows PC unit growth to come from emerging markets.

There's been a lot of negative press around Vista in mainstream media and blogs, as of late. Microsoft is well aware it needs to pull out the stops to counter perceptions that the product has been a flop.