Ban on Microsoft Word and Office sales begins today
Microsoft has been the center of a legal battle from a small patent owning company, i4i for many months for infringing on it's "Custom XML" patent which is included in Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007 and is part of Office 2007 suites. Recently, Microsoft lost the court battle against I4i, after stalling for a few months with an emergency motion and was ordered to take Word 2007 off the market by January 11th, 2010. In addition, Microsoft must also pay i4i damages of $290m.
Today, the 11th of January, marks the day that Word was to be off the market, but to the consumer nothing has changed. According to Microsoft, they have complied with the court's ruling and have released a 'revised version' of Microsoft Word and Office 2007 suites that does not have the 'Custom XML' technology.
The new version, which hits US stores today, has no visual differences and will not be discernable from the previous variant of Microsoft Office 2007. Microsoft has also removed Office 2003 from MSDN and Technet earlier last week.
According to the BBC, Microsoft filed another appeal against the injunction on January 8, even though they have already challenged the ruling once before. The latest appeal has been filed because Microsoft believed the decision conflicted with "established precedents governing trial procedure and the determination of damages" according to Kevin Kutz, director of public affairs at Microsoft.
Windows 7 is Fastest Selling OS in History
Fast Company is reporting that the Director of Marketing for Microsoft's Entertainment and Device Devision, Craig Belinson, has said that "Windows 7 is by far the fastest selling Operating System in history." While this news may not come as much of a surprise, it's always nice to hear how well Microsoft's latest pride and joy is doing.
Sadly, Belinson didn't provide any software sales numbers to back up his claim. Instead, he brought PC sales numbers, which directly correspond to Windows 7 sales (since PCs come with the OS installed). He states that during the week of Windows 7's launch, there was a 50% jump in PC sales when compared to the previous week. In addition, Black Friday saw a 63% bump from a year ago, and the holiday season, as a whole, saw a 50% increase in PC sales. Just as a side note, a poll on Lifehacker, which was done just weeks after Windows 7 was released, showed that 41% of readers had already begun using Windows 7 as their primary OS.
While it's great to see Windows 7 be the success that Vista, unfortunately, was not, it's also important to remember that being the fastest selling OS doesn't mean as much as it once did. Back in the days of Windows XP there were far fewer computers in the world and before XP, there were even less. Of course Windows 7 is the fastest selling OS, there are many more PCs in the world than there were when Vista, or any other Windows OS was released. This fact will continue to dictate the future trend of OS sales. As evident from Belinson's comments, the more PCs sold in the world, the more copies of Windows sold. Microsoft's next major OS release will most likely see even better numbers than Windows 7 did (assuming it's not another Vista, of course).