More than 240 million licenses of Windows 7 have been sold in its first year, Microsoft announced today.

Windows 7 is the fastest selling operating system in history. As of September, Windows 7 was running on 93% of new consumer PCs and has over 17% global OS market share (according to Net Applications as of October 1st). Six months after launch, 100% (over 18,000) of Microsoft's OEM partners were selling Windows 7 PCs versus 70% for Windows Vista PCs at a comparable time period.

Over the last year, Microsoft saw that customer satisfaction for the company had outpaced Apple in February and in May the American Customer Satisfaction Index report showed a jump in customer satisfaction for Microsoft in 2010 over the previous year. Both of these attribute Windows 7 as the key factor for improved customer satisfaction for Microsoft.

Microsoft has also just released Windows Live Essentials 2011 and the beta of Internet Explorer 9. The beta of Internet Explorer 9 has been downloaded 6 million times as of Oct. 1st, Microsoft added.