Microsoft announced that its Windows 8 operating system has surpassed 200 million licenses, up from the 100 million licenses the company announced back in May of 2013. The software giant hasn't done much talking about Windows 8's performance in the sales department; leading analysts to conclude that the operating system is failing to gain traction among users.
Microsoft's Executive Vice President of Marketing Tami Reller made the announcement on Thursday at the Goldman Sachs Technology & Internet Conference. It's not like Microsoft to make a casual sales announcement about Windows; it goes to show that things might not be going according to plan at Redmond, and there's no surety if that will change anytime soon.
Bear in mind that just because an additional 100 million Windows 8 licenses have been sold since May, 2013, that does not necessarily mean that the licenses were sold directly to consumers. A huge chunk of that number was sold to OEMs for use on devices and some of those devices haven't been created yet, let alone shipped to stores worldwide.
Interestingly enough, Windows 8's growth is slower than that of Windows 7. During the first 6 months, Windows 8 was on par with Windows 7's growth during the same timeframe. However, things have changed considerably. Windows 8 sales grew to 100 million in the first 6 months and 200 million in 15 months, it proves that Windows 8 sales have slipped since the first announcement, which is why Microsoft did not release an update on sales until now.
For comparison's sake, Microsoft sold 240 million Windows 7 licenses in the first year, after the operating system launched on October 22, 2009. That number grew to 300 million in its 15 month life cycle, which means Windows 8 has sold 100 million fewer copies than Windows 7 during the same timeframe.
It's clear by the way things are looking that Windows 8 might never improve and an abundance of updates will not change that. Microsoft's only hope right now is to swiftly turn all attention to Windows 9 and hope for a better reception from PC users.
We should get an update on Windows 9 and what the Redmond giant is planning at its BUILD developer conference in April.
