Windows 95 Sales Frenzy Starts To Cool But New Microsoft Software Still Sets Record For Initial Sales

Sales of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows 95 fell sharply in stores during its second week of availability, analysts and executives said Thursday.

But demand continues to outrun any previous software program, despite the decline from its debut in a global publicity blitz for Microsoft that filled computer stores with shoppers at midnight.

“No one expected to have that type of business to continue,” said Larry Mondry, executive vice president of merchandising for CompUSA, one of the nation’s largest computer retailers. “You wish it would but know it couldn’t.”

Through retailers, Microsoft sold $30 million worth of Windows 95 on its first day, Aug. 24, according to PC Data, a software market research firm in Reston, Va. That fell to $7 million by the following Sunday, rose again last week and fell to $5.5 million last Sunday.

At roughly $85 per copy, the volume of sales in stores through the first 11 days reached 1.63 million copies, said Ann Stephens, president of PC Data.

“I am being a little conservative,” she said. “But for August, a very large chunk of total software sales is going to be Windows 95.”

Last week, Microsoft said it sold 1 million copies through retailers on the first four days. PC Data estimated about 900,000 copies in that same period.

Microsoft did not have new figures this week and a spokeswoman said it would not regularly disclose sales for Windows 95, which is the first major update in five years to the main program that runs a personal computer. Windows is used on 8 out of 10 PCs, more than 100 million worldwide.

Several hundred thousand more copies of Windows 95 have been installed on personal computers sold since Aug. 24 and millions more are in PCs now in the hands of distributors.

In one indication of a slowdown in the Windows 95 frenzy, Microsoft said phone calls from people needing help installing or using the new software were down sharply.

With the exception of some call spikes at night, there was virtually no wait to reach a technician during Labor Day weekend. Busy signals and waits of up to an hour were common the previous weekend.

Busy signals are triggered when Microsoft’s phone lines have a wait of more than 15 minutes. During the first weekend, when the hold queue dipped below 15 minutes, more callers would be let in, sometimes in a surge that sent waiting time way past 15 minutes.

“We still are experiencing some spikes in the after hours,” said Deborah Willingham, vice presidentsupport at Microsoft. “For instance, we were surprised by spikes between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. Pacific time on Saturday and Sunday nights.”

There are far more callers with questions about installing the software rather than running it, she said.

While there have been no major glitches reported in Windows 95, Microsoft has come under fire for its incompatibility with several popular programs for browsing the World Wide Web portion of the Internet.

The company has also had to fight a perception that the version of Windows 95 that comes on diskettes contains a virus. While it doesn’t contain a virus, it can be ruined by a rogue program that already exists on a PC. After that discovery last week, Microsoft offered to replace the program for people who harm it with a pre-existing virus.

And a trade journal reported this week that some people who used the Microsoft Network, an on-line service launched by the company with Windows 95, were being mysteriously locked out.

Microsoft executives said the lockouts occurred only with people who had been testing the product before launch and had not committed to paying for it afterward.