July 26 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp., the world's biggest software maker, has sold 60 million licenses for the Windows Vista operating system since it went on sale to all customers at the end of January.

That's on pace to beat the initial estimate of Roger Kay, an analyst at Wayland, Massachusetts-based researcher Endpoint Technologies Associates. Kay estimated 82 million licenses would be sold for the year. Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner announced the number today at Microsoft's analyst meeting.

Fiscal fourth-quarter sales of Windows for personal computers only met the low end of the company's forecast, spurring concern among investors that demand for Vista fell short of expectations. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer needs to develop businesses other than Vista to bolster the stock price, analysts said.

``They need to sell this vision of where this company goes beyond Vista and to show there is growth beyond the Windows- oriented product cycle,'' Charles Di Bona, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York, said in an interview. ``That's really what would drive the ultimate expansion needed to move this stock significantly northwards.''

Shares of Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft fell 73 cents to $29.98 as of 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The stock is little changed this year.

Big Customers

Continental Airlines Inc., the fourth-largest U.S. carrier, will install 10,000 copies of Vista by year's end, Turner said. Banco Bradesco SA, Brazil's second-biggest non-state-owned bank, will move 70,000 workers to Vista. The program, Microsoft's first new version of Windows for PCs since 2001, was introduced in November to some business customers. It was released more widely in January.

The total number of Windows copies in use, including all authorized versions and pirated copies, will hit 1 billion this year, Ballmer said at the meeting in Redmond today.

The stock has risen 26 percent since last year's meeting, when Ballmer faced investors' criticism for an unforeseen spending increase and delays to Vista and Office 2007.

Ballmer spoke today about Microsoft's increasing focus on acquisitions. Takeover spending will outpace the company's research and development budget in the year that began July 1 for the first time, Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said. The acquisitions include a $6 billion purchase of online advertising company AQuantive Inc., which Microsoft expects to close next month.

``Would we do another AQuantive? Possibly,'' Liddell said. ``We may never do another one of that size. We may do another one next month if it was the right one to do. We will use our balance sheet to fuel growth.''

`Sustained Investment'

The company's research budget was $7.12 billion for the fiscal year just ended.

``The formula for sustained growth does require sustained investment,'' Ballmer said.

Microsoft and rest of the technology industry face significant changes, he said. The company is shifting from selling packaged software to selling more programs as services over the Internet. That may help it compete with companies such as Google Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc.

``Technology is a business of disruption,'' he said. ``If that scares people as investors, they probably ought not be in our stock.''

AdECN Purchase

Microsoft said it is buying Internet advertising auction exchange AdECN Inc. in a bid to catch up with market leader Google Inc. Terms weren't disclosed. AdECN, based in Carpinteria, California, lets Internet sites auction off unsold ad inventory and competes with Right Media Inc., which was acquired by Yahoo! Inc. this month.

Microsoft's hiring growth will continue to slow this year, spokesman Bill Cox said. The company said last week that its workforce grew by about 10 percent, or more than 7,000, in the year ended June 30. That's down from growth of almost 17 percent, or 10,000 workers, in the previous year.

Sales of Microsoft's Office SharePoint Server, a program that lets companies set up Web sites, search for data and organize corporate documents, rose more than 35 percent to top $800 million in the year that ended June 30, Business Division President Jeff Raikes said.

Sales of SharePoint, introduced in 2001, have grown faster than any other piece of software in the company's history, Raikes said in an interview. Microsoft says it has sold more than 85 million licenses to 17,000 customers.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dina Bass in Seattle at dbass2@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 26, 2007 20:55 EDT