According to NPD’s weekly tracking service, Windows 7 software unit sales in the US were 234 percent higher than Vista’s first few days of sales. However, revenue growth wasn’t as strong as Vista release. Also PC hardware sales showed only a modest increase at 49 percent in year-over-year sales and 95 percent over the week prior to launch.  Vista on the other hand had 68 percent rise in sales over the prior year and 170 percent over the week preceding the launch.

“A combination of factors impacted Windows 7 PC sales at the outset, but the trajectory of overall PC sales is very strong leading into the holiday season,” said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD.  “Vista had a slight advantage at launch, as January traditionally has a bigger sales footprint than October.  The other hurdle Windows 7 faced was sales of PCs with older operating systems (XP and Vista) were high, making up 20 percent of sales during the Windows 7 launch, compared to just 6 percent of older operating sales during Vista’s launch week.”

According to Digitimes, PC vendors reported that demand for PC hardware did not turn strong after the launch of Windows 7 in late October and is unlikely to do so in 2009 due to most Windows Vista users not needing to replace their PCs in order to upgrade to Windows 7, while some users are waiting for Microsoft to release Windows 7’s first service pack. Some notebook vendors are also facing surplus inventory as they placed a lot of Windows 7 based notebook orders in the third quarter hoping to satisfy demand during the peak season, but market demand has turned out to be weaker than expected.

Though Windows 7 has received positive reviews, it looks like PC hardware sales have not benefited from all the positive press generated by Windows 7, even in holiday season.