Windows 7 has sold an average of 7 copies per second for nine months. Article here.

To the extent that there’s ever a downside to that level of success, it’s clear that Microsoft is trying to change it’s business model – witness its major investments in Azure and BPOS, which is to say, “cloud computing.” And it’s challenging to rally established sales channels around a new model when there’s any perceived risk to the old one.

Another challenge: finding growth areas. The velocity of Windows 7 sales right now is largely being driven by pent up demand for a decent upgrade option from Windows XP (which is 10 years old now, that’s like 900 in people years). To put it another way, the desktop computing market isn’t really growing, at least not quickly.

A market that is really growing like gangbusters? Mobile computing. But Microsoft is still playing catch up there.

Although I’m the proud owner of a brand new Windows phone, I was just in an Apple store today. There I observed the following: lots of people, lots of buzz, lots of cool products, lots of staff running around in blue shirts. In short, excitement.

Microsoft has an impressive portfolio of enterprise products. Second to none, in fact. But recapturing that Windows 95-like excitement in the consumer space is going to be really tough. Not impossible, though.

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