News

More Than 210 Million Copies of Windows XP Shipped

• By Scott Bekker
• 05/04/2004

The company released the figure at its Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Seattle Tuesday in an effort to prove to partners what they already know -- that the Windows client platform represents a huge market opportunity.

"The Windows XP sales figure includes licenses for Windows XP Professional and Windows XP Home Edition sold through retail and original equipment manufacturer channels," the Microsoft statement read.

Analyst Al Gillen, whose operating system shipment research reports for IDC are widely viewed as definitive and are frequently cited by Microsoft officials, said Microsoft's figure was roughly consistent with his own.

"Their shipments are increasing generally anywhere from 5 percent to 8 percent every year. The hardware actually bounced back pretty well in 2003, which means that Microsoft's shipments bounced up as well," Gillen said.

Gillen added that while Microsoft's operating system shipments got a boost in 2001 and 2002 from Licensing 6.0 agreements, from here on out the company's fortunes are more dependent on PC sales.

They're lucky enough that they can just ride along on the flip side of the PC market. But they're trapped, by the PC market as well," Gillen said.