Windows 98 retail sales surpass Windows 95 in US

Since its launch in June, Microsoft has sold 1.2 million Windows 98 upgrades and over 500,000 full versions at retail stores in the UnitedStates. That's only 6% below the number of Windows 95 upgrades sold afterthe same amount of time but, amazingly, is twice the number of fullversions of Windows 95 that were sold by that time. Windows 98 is, byfar, the best selling software product released in 1998.

On the other hand, hardware manufacturer bundles are down from the sametime period when Windows 95 was first sold. Microsoft has sold over 3million copies of Windows 98 so far, compared to over 7 million for Windows 95 after a similar time period.

The success of Windows 98 has jump-started the Universal Serial Bus (USB)device market, however. Before Windows 98 launched, only 15 USB deviceswere available. Now there are over 50 and numerous manufacturers, includingSony, Philips, UMAX, NEC, and others are racing to market with more.

Unlike Windows 95, which ushered in a new era of 32-bit software, Windows98 isn't responsible for wholesale software upgrades because the product isessentially a point upgrade to Windows 95. Few Windows 98-specific softwareproducts are available simply because Windows 95 and 98 are almost identical to software programs. Still, Windows 98 and Plus! 98 continue tohold the number one and two spots on software sales charts