Just over a month after the official release of Windows 8, Microsoft has reported that it has sold 40 million Windows 8 licences to date.
Microsoft's finance and marketing head for Windows, Tami Reller, made the announcement yesterday while speaking at the Credit Suisse 2012 Annual Technology Conference.
According to Reller, Windows 8 upgrade momentum is outpacing that of Windows 7. Reller, however, did not provide an exact breakdown of how many of the new licences were upgrades and how many were purchases of new machines running the software.
It has also been noted that the 40 million figure includes sales to PC manufacturers, so it is not necessarily a reflection on how many users have actually adopted the new operating system.
Windows 7 reportedly sold over 60 million units in its first 10 weeks of general availability at the end of 2009. Over 670 million Windows 7 licences have been sold to date.
In September, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made the ambitious prediction that in one year there will be close to 400 million devices running Windows 8 (including Windows phones, tablets and PCs). The Microsoft user base is also currently estimated to be at the 1.25 billion user mark.
Enterprise questions
Forrester analyst David Johnson says, according to data from the research firm's Forrsights Hardware Survey, Windows 8 is seeing "roughly half" of the interest from IT hardware decision-makers in the US and Europe than Windows 7 saw at the same point in its release cycle.
"Only 24% of firms expect to migrate to Windows 8, but have no specific plans to do so, versus 49% for Windows 7 back in 2009. Only 5% of firms have specific plans to migrate to Windows 8 in the next 12 months, versus 10% for Windows 7 in 2009."
Johnson adds that the data shows there is higher interest in Windows 8 than expected among employees. According to the survey, 20% say they would prefer Windows 8 on their next touch-screen tablet (compared to 26% for iOS).
"Forrester does not expect enterprises to adopt Windows 8 as their primary IT standard. But we do expect that employees will force IT to have a formal support policy for Windows 8 for employee-owned devices. Windows 8 will accelerate BYOD demand," says Johnson.
Xbox numbers
In the consumer space, Microsoft also revealed this week that it sold over 750 000 Xbox game consoles over the Black Friday week. In a blog post, Microsoft spokesperson Larry Hryb said the sales figures exceeded internal forecasts and added that Xbox Live Gold subscription sales increased more than 50% compared to last year's Black Friday week.
"We saw incredible activity on Xbox over the weekend. For example, on Sunday alone we had more than 14 million people on Xbox Live across the world, racking up more than 72 million hours of use in just one day."
The 750 000 figure is actually down on last year's Black Friday week numbers of 960 000 units sold (with 800 000 of those sold within a 24-hour period). The Xbox has been around for seven years now, and a new model is expected to be released next year.
The Xbox is facing increasing competition from Nintendo with the new Wii U console, which went on sale earlier this month. Nintendo reported 400 000 sales during the new console's launch week. The original Wii console still managed to notch up sales of 300 000 units in the Black Friday week.
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