18 months ago to this day was when we launched Windows 7 and with that we’ve hit another important milestone: we are pleased to announce that Windows 7 has sold more than 350 million licenses. The momentum we’ve seen and continue to see with Windows 7 is incredible. We are seeing good momentum with Internet Explorer 9 as well! We designed Internet Explorer 9 to provide the best way to experience the Web on Windows and we are delighted to see partners like Groupon, Slacker, Hulu, and eBay already creating great experiences for their customers.
Number of licenses sold is one way of looking at market success. Customers having a positive and productive experience with Windows 7 is also an important measure. Analyst firms like IDC estimate that more than 90% of businesses are currently in progress with their Windows 7 migrations. And we’ve seen that companies who have deployed Windows 7 save an average of $140 per PC per year – showing a 131% return on investment in just more than 12 months. Of course, each Windows 7 customer story and experience is unique. Today, we are launching a special page off the Windows for your Business Blog that will showcase just a sampling of Windows customers and the business results they achieved with Windows 7. We hope you enjoy reading these stories and hope you will continue to visit this page as we highlight new customer stories on a regular basis.
I would like to take a moment and talk about a specific customer – Feeding America. Feeding America is the U.S.’s leading hunger-relief charity, providing meals to 37 million hungry Americans every year. Their deployment of Windows 7 is 100% complete. Every one of their employees at their national office is using Windows 7 and so are their users at supported food banks (over 200 in the U.S. and Puerto Rico). And as new food banks enter their support program, PCs in those food banks are quickly re-imaged with Windows 7. Patrick Whalen, Feeding America’s Director of Infrastructure Services, talks about Feeding America’s adoption of Windows 7 and the benefits they are seeing in the below video:
We’ve done a lot in the last 18 months that improves upon the experience people have on their PCs with Windows 7. We launched Windows Live Wave 4 (which included Windows Live Essentials 2011 and enhancements to Hotmail), released the first service pack for Windows 7, and recently launched Internet Explorer 9. And we’re hard at work on further innovation for Windows. At CES this year we announced the next version of Windows will support System on a Chip (SoC) and last week at MIX11 we released the first platform preview to developers for Internet Explorer 10.