Office Sales Up 50.7%
November software sales data has been released by the NPD, and it shows that in its first year of availability, Office 2007 and promotions for Mac Office pushed Office sales up 50.7%. Total software sales were up 10.3%, with Office accounting for two-thirds of that growth. Black Friday sales were up 65%, and helped by a promotion that gave free Office 2008 to Mac Office 2004 buyers, Mac sales on that Friday were up a staggering 215%.
As NPD’s Chris Swenson says, Microsoft Office is driving the PC software industry at this point. Quoted by Joe Wilcox:
The “magnitude of Office sales relative to the rest of the PC software market” is phenomenal, Swenson said. “It’s the massively huge tail wagging the dog. If the senior execs at Best Buy, Office Depot, etc. don’t buy Jeff Raikes [president of Microsoft’s Business division] a beer the next time he’s in town, something is seriously wrong.”
