Microsoft's Ballmer says Windows 7 sales 'fantastic'

“Windows 7 is an example of the kind of innovations that I think are important in the technology marketplace,” Ballmer said at a news briefing in Tokyo Thursday.

Microsoft based in Redmond, Washington, began selling Windows 7 on Oct. 22 and said the next day it sold more copies of Windows last quarter than in any previous period. Orders for the new operating system and high demand for the Windows XP used on cheap laptops called netbooks boosted sales of the software in the three months, it said at the time.

Microsoft is “more bullish” on the personal-computer market than three months ago and expects the recovery in consumer sales to continue, General Manager Bill Koefoed said last month. Corporate demand is sluggish and won't rebound this quarter as some analysts expect, he said at the time.

PC sales rose 2.3 percent in the third quarter, according to IDC, resuming growth a quarter earlier than the Framingham, Massachusetts-based research firm had projected.

Most people who buy new PCs will get Windows 7, Ballmer said Wednesday in Taipei, Taiwan.

The software maker, which announced a search-engine partnership with Yahoo! Inc. in the U.S. in July, may expand the agreement to overseas markets, Ballmer said, without giving further details. The expansion will depend on Microsoft's experience in the U.S. and regulatory approval, he said.

The accord, originally slated to be completed by Oct. 27, will take longer than expected to negotiate, Yahoo said last month.

The deal is meant to provide a bigger competitor to Google Inc. by having Yahoo and Microsoft join forces in the search market. Under the partnership, Yahoo would put Microsoft's Bing search engine on its Web sites and split the related advertising revenue.

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