At times, the success of Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows 8, can seem questionable. While Microsoft was able to sell over 240 million Windows 7 licenses a year after the software’s launch, Windows 8 is just beginning to see any figures close to that number. It has been fifteen months and Microsoft has just now acknowledged that they have sold over 200 million licenses.
During today’s Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, Microsoft’s Executive Vice President of Marketing Tami Reller, made the comment that the personal computing operating system has just surpassed the 200 million licenses number in terms of sales.
It is important to note what “licenses sold” actually means. The number is a combination of licenses sold to OEMs (Dell, Lenovo, Sony, etc.) and licenses picked up by users for upgrading their existing PC. The number does not include the number of Windows 8 licenses that were sold to enterprise users via volume licensing.
For those unfamiliar with volume licensing – businesses, governments, and educational institutions are usually given a single volume license key that allows multiple copies of the software to be installed across various machines (you can think of it as the master license key).
Microsoft later reached out to the media and confirmed the statement made by its Executive Vice President of Marketing Tami Reller:
“Windows 8 has surpassed 200 million licenses sold, and we continue to see momentum. This number includes Windows licenses that ship on a new tablet or PC, as well as upgrades to Windows 8. The figure does not include volume license sales to enterprise. Windows is a central part of life for more than 1.5 billion people around the world, and we are looking forward to the future.”
As always, despite the slightly low sales numbers, Microsoft is keeping their chin held high and walking forward into the future with confidence. It is hoped that the company can fix and/or correct many of the issues consumers saw with Windows 8 in their upcoming update, Windows 8.1 Update 1.
Are you on Windows 8 or are you still holding out?
Source: ZDNet
