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

How does this compare to Windows 7 sales? Microsoft said it had sold 60 million Windows 7 licenses from the end of October 2009, its launch date, to the end of January 2010 December 2009. So that’s 60 million Windows 7 licenses sold in two months. So far, Microsoft has sold 40 million licenses of Windows 8 in one month.

Mary Jo Foley – ZDNet

Windows 7 Home Premium retailed for 120$ for upgrade and 200$ for full sale price. (( http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/06/windows-7-pricing-announced-cheaper-than-vista/ )) Windows 8 upgrade price is 40$ (( for an online download: http://news.yahoo.com/microsoft-sets-windows-8-price-opens-pre-order-212506799.html )) and around 100$ for the OEM version full price. (( http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-8-pricing-revealed-through-newegg ))

Also, since 2009 the “computer population” in the world has increased somewhat, although i can’t get any decent numbers on that.

Bottom line, with a larger available market and with prices slashed in half or more, Windows 8 can at best match or come close to initial Windows 7 sales. So, very “modest” indeed.

Update: One can also read this news essentially as: “Microsoft: with Windows 8 we’ve halved our Operating System Division revenues in its first month.” Curious to see how the shareholders will react once they realize what’s been done.

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