200 million :: do the math
by Volker Weber
200 Million Windows 8 licenses, up from 100 Million ten months ago. That's 10 million a month, about half of what Windows 7 sells.
Comments
Still quite shy of the Windows 7 figures at the same point in the release cycle.
I see lots of folks moving off XP, and I think the majority of those are businesses who are worried about continued support. My guess is those will move to Win 7 through volume license agreements, but those won't show in the sales numbers. It's really a complicated scenario to compare Win7 to Win8, due to many changes.
My new computer has a Win8 licence sticker on it. Those nice people at HP shipped it with Win7 via the downgrade rights available in the Professional edition. If this is typical (and I suspect it is), then the number of Win8 licenses in use may be a lot lower.
Like Chris says, how many of those licenses sold equate to actual installations of Windows 8? Not very many, I'd say.
Windows 7 followed a very weak release (the much-detested Vista) and so people that bought it actually wanted it! So maybe there's hope for Windows 9, which will be in something of a similar position - i.e. following on from a poor release. Microsoft will just have to hope that tablets (non-Microsoft) and Chromebooks haven't eaten too much of its market by then.
So, sales figures don't match usage, and business users adapt slowly to new versions of windows - that's not particularly new is it?
What I don't understand is the strategy behind WinRT aka Windows Store Apps. I mean, as a developer, if you have a Win32 app, why would you spend time and money to rewrite the code to WinRT? Your client base would shrink from almost all Windows versions to Windows 8/RT only. In other words you spend time and money to reduce the audience for your app dramatically.
If Microsoft wanted to introduce a new app platform and bring the full heft of Widows behind it, why not make something that runs at least on Windows 7 too? You can update Windows 7 to the latest .NET version, why not base WinRT on a similar framework that can be added to older Windows versions and runs the apps in a windowed version? And while you are on it don't ignore Windows Phone....
