Windows 7 breaks Amazon UK (pre-order) sales records

Hmm – looks like Microsoft’s management may get to breathe easy for a little longer on news from the UK that the company’s Windows 7 OS has just become the biggest grossing pre-order ever on Amazon UK.

The software has grabbed the top spot from the last Harry Potter novel and is already significantly more successful than Windows Vista. The OS launches tomorrow.

Amazon.co.uk says the only item to shift more than Windows 7 in the past three months is Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code follow-up The Lost Symbol. Indeed, pre-orders for Windows 7 in the first eight hours of going on sale outnumbered those of Windows Vista’s entire pre-order period.

Managing director of Amazon, Brian McBride said, ‘The launch of Windows 7 has superseded everyone’s expectations, storming ahead of ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ as the biggest-grossing pre-order product of all-time at Amazon.co.uk, and demand is still going strong.”

For all its UK success, Microsoft’s not faring quite as well in the more populous US market – sure, it’s currently in the top three slots, but Ballmer’s boys are bound to be aware that Snow Leopard is the fourth biggest selling slice of software in the US.

PS: Knowing the fate of Microsoft’s new OS will offer an interesting insight into Apple’s future success tempting Windows users across to the Mac.