During the keynote at WPC: Day 1, Steve Ballmer took to the stage and announced that Microsoft has now sold more than 400 million licenses for Windows 7 to date.
Since the release of Windows 7 on July 22, 2009 (RTM), it has surpassed all of Microsoft"s expectations and has become the worlds fastest selling operating system. Windows 7 was only the stepping stone to Microsoft"s recent success though. Microsoft Office 2010 also became the fastest selling Office software in history, too.
The Windows Team Blog also mentioned that Windows 7 was holding true to it, selling 7 copies every second around the world. The team also mentioned that Internet Explorer 9 is now the most popular modern browser, running on 17% of all Windows 7 PCs worldwide.
As the company continues its success with Windows 7, Microsoft is already working hard on Windows 8. The next major operating system will improve off of Windows 7, will feature UI changes and have a second interface designed specifically for tablets.
There has already been a handful of Windows 8 build leaks in the past few months. As there isn"t any official release dates, analysts believe that Microsoft is nearing the public beta stage to help maintain its timeline of achieving an RTM in 2012.