During his keynote speech at the 2011 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer revealed that the Redmond-based company has sold its 400 millionth licence for the Windows 7 OS in less than two years.

This makes for a pretty impressive rate of sales when one considers that around this time last year the company announced that it had reached the 150 million mark in Windows 7 OS licences sold.

“According to Net Applications as of June 2011, Windows 7 is now running on 27.13% of all PCs worldwide. And of PCs running Windows 7 in the U.S., Internet Explorer 9 is now the most popular modern browser. Internet Explorer 9 is running on 17% of Windows 7 PCs worldwide,” a post by Brandon LeBlanc, who runs Microsoft’s The Windows Blog, read.

Ballmer also revealed that the latest version of the company’s office productivity suit, Office 2010, is also delivering strong sales as Microsoft has sold more than 100 million Office 2010 licences thus far.

 

Microsoft’s free email service, Hotmail, turned 15 years old last week and after one and a half decades Hotmail is still one of the most utilised email services, even in the face of stiff competition from Google’s Gmail amongst others.