Microsoft: We've sold 40 million Windows 8 licenses to date

Win 8 moves ~40,000,000 licenses in first month. Upgrades are $39.99.<p>Win 7 moved ~30,000,000 in month one. Upgrades were $120 - 220/upgrade.<p>Vista moved 20,000,000 first month. Upgrades were $129 - 299.<p>MSFT is offering the DVD-version of Windows 8 for ~$30/more per copy so let's just pretend that the fair price for comparison of Windows 8 is $69.99 (since I assume far more physical media went out of Win 7 in 2009).<p>So that's still 1/2 the revenue per upgrade they collected in the previous cycles.<p>Looking at their revenue by division Windows &#38; Win Live have been on the decline:<p><a href="http://www.tannerhelland.com/wp-content/uploads/Microsoft-revenue-by-division-2010-2012.png" rel="nofollow">http://www.tannerhelland.com/wp-content/uploads/Microsoft-re...</a><p>I wonder how drastically this will impact them - if they see a real, sustained gain in traction vs. Windows 7 adoption in the 25% range, that's not going to make up for the shortfall in revenues but certainly would help to lay a foundation for future growth in mobile / server &#38; tools / business / etc.<p>I'm not sure I even have a point, just trying to sort through this data and get a sense of what it means for MSFT macro.

Which might simply mean that this is the approximate amount of non-Apple laptops (and desktops?) sold since Win8's launch, because most of them are now sold only with Win8 licenses [0]. Hardly a mark of success, but of MS's (doomed?) pervasiveness.<p>[0] e.g., <a href="http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:category.details?current-catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087&#38;current-category-id=0E6E3D0084869C3EB4172DA2F965A301" rel="nofollow">http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPo...</a>

The vast majority of these licenses were sold to OEM's, who now have to "get rid of them" in the market. So we'll see how long that takes before they ask for another bulk of licenses from Microsoft. Could be weeks or could be months. If it's months, next time they'll request much fewer licenses.

Has anyone else noticed that any pro Microsoft news gets immediately flagged off the front page? The Hackernews hivemind really is creating its own little bubble.<p><a href="http://hnrankings.info/4839043/" rel="nofollow">http://hnrankings.info/4839043/</a>

We should be able see real Win8 usage numbers in the IE10 stats over the next couple of months, at least until IE10 ships for Win7.

They booted the guy who headed up the Windows product line. They can claim success and "greatest OS ever" all they want but it's clear to me that MS isn't thrilled.

Yeah, I bought one of your licenses Microsoft. I didn't want to buy it. Given the choice I would not have bought it. And quite clearly as evidenced in my past week of Twitter I've been trying to get rid of it. Alas, to no avail...

If Microsoft wanted to impart real knowledge in pronouncements such as this they would have clarity in what they say. By not giving a definition of what they mean by "licenses sold" they are avoiding clarity. It's an example of why many people, including myself, have lost confidence in everything they say.

I wonder how many they actually <i>sold</i>. Many are simply bought with new computers, and quite a few are probably the free upgrades that hardware vendors were promising for new Windows 7 computers just before the release.

What's very important is to know how well the store is doing. The windows store is the reason they are selling at a lower price than in the past, expecting a continuous stream of revenue through it.

Any news on enterprise adoption of Windows 8? I assume that this will be like Vista -- many large companies won't bother upgrading. That will be a huge drag on Windows 8 adoption.

That's all? Their OEM manufacturers alone would account to about that much.

I wonder how many Windows 7 licences were sold in the same period