News - Microsoft reveals Windows 8 sales figures

[HEXUS]

Also talks up Windows Phone 8’s popularity.

Read more.

[spoon_]

The business orientated tech magazine asked Microsoft to comment on the sales split between these markets but a Microsoft spokesperson replied with the following statement “While we can’t share a specific breakdown, Windows 8 upgrades continue to outpace Windows 7 sales.”

Funny this.

[TheAnimus]

As someone who writes software for a living it is often incredibly frustraiting when clients don't upgrade, but want the new features or bug fixes.

I have nothing against MS only selling the new version, nothing at all. So long as it will be properly supported for 10 years.

That is why I can never advise anyone to go with Apple.

[Wozza63]

As someone who writes software for a living it is often incredibly frustraiting when clients don't upgrade, but want the new features or bug fixes.

I have nothing against MS only selling the new version, nothing at all. So long as it will be properly supported for 10 years.

That is why I can never advise anyone to go with Apple.

How can you expect an operating system to be supported for 10 years, thats insane, technology moves too quickly to update a 10 year old OS, it is only because of the downfall of vista that XP was still supported up until a few months back

[AlexKitch]

It might be selling better than its predecessor, but that doesn't mean it's better.

On Facebook, I've spotted two separate people in recent weeks complaining about Windows 8 on their new laptop and asking for advice about how to get Windows 7 back.

[TheAnimus]

How can you expect an operating system to be supported for 10 years, thats insane, technology moves too quickly to update a 10 year old OS, it is only because of the downfall of vista that XP was still supported up until a few months back

Hi from an XP machine, from a very large multinationals client site.

Despite £4k of hardware for me to use. They use XP. I effing hate using XP now.

[Noxvayl]

They keep referring to Windows 8 as a whole so we are kept in the dark about how well each different version of Windows 8 is actually doing; what portion of those sales are from phones? Google activates about 1.3 million Android devices per day, from 26 Oct 2012 to 9 Jan 2013 there have been 75 days so Microsoft have managed 800 000 sales per day covering a similar range of mobile devices to Android as well as covering desktops and business sales making that figure even less impressive. If that figure was only for mobile devices than it is only 61% as many devices as Google activated over the same period.

We also have recent news reporting that Windows 8 internet usage share is trailing Windows 7 over the same period just after their respective releases.

http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2012...windows-7-did/

Taking these two news reports together paints a less than impressive picture for Windows desktop sales and, to me anyway, is not very impressive for the mobile sales either.

To me they are shouting from the rooftops about figures that are actually not worthy of the effort.

[Percy1983]

I will say I am very happy with windows 8, after I added classic shell that is.

[ed^chigliak]

What kind if idiot statistics are these... windows 7 has been out a good long while now and everybody has a copy so naturally windows 8 is selling more when compared in this manner.

If you compare sales figures for windows 7 during the first 2 months after it's release with the same relative period for the windows 8 you can see the truth is very poor sales. Worse than Vista levels of poor.

Poor sales are IMO due to:-
1) Windows 7 is not that old and it does just fine. Why spend money on the upgrade when it's not necessary.
2) Windows 8 has 2 user interfaces to contend with so it's just altogether more confusing.
3) Tiles have an ugly aesthetic due to the bold colours and lack of white space between them. Not just ugly but also less flexible and resizing / positioning seems far too limited.

[Whiternoise]

How can you expect an operating system to be supported for 10 years, thats insane, technology moves too quickly to update a 10 year old OS, it is only because of the downfall of vista that XP was still supported up until a few months back

Because in many environments it doesn't move at all. Legacy. Reliable legacy.

That and it costs a lot of money to upgrade a few thousand computers (hardware and all) every three years. Oh and don't forget that critical in-house software that now doesn't run on the latest version of Windows and has to be re-coded by somebody who doesn't work for free.

[Blastuk]

Because in many environments it doesn't move at all. Legacy. Reliable legacy.

That and it costs a lot of money to upgrade a few thousand computers (hardware and all) every three years. Oh and don't forget that critical in-house software that now doesn't run on the latest version of Windows and has to be re-coded by somebody who doesn't work for free.

Pretty much this, the account I work on is currently supporting 140,000+ devices running xp and we're only just starting the transition to something else.

[badass]

Because in many environments it doesn't move at all. Legacy. Reliable legacy.

That and it costs a lot of money to upgrade a few thousand computers (hardware and all) every three years. Oh and don't forget that critical in-house software that now doesn't run on the latest version of Windows and has to be re-coded by somebody who doesn't work for free.

Agreed. However I will say that generally the reason that code has to be rewritten for a new version of Windows is that it was so poorly written in the first place.

[shaithis]

I'm fairly sure that if Windows 7 was £25 for the first few months, Windows 8 sales would be behind it.

In Microsoft terms, they are practically giving Windows 8 away.

[Brewster0101]

Sales figure includes numbers sold in bulk to vendors - meaning theres a chance the vendors have not actually sold them or passed them on. Could be 79 million copies stuck in Dell's warehouse for all we know.

[burge666]

I tried it as I managed to get a copy for £15 but uninstalled after a few days. Huge issues with DNLA and had to authorise my devices every time I rebooted my PC.

[aidanjt]

How can you expect an operating system to be supported for 10 years, thats insane, technology moves too quickly to update a 10 year old OS, it is only because of the downfall of vista that XP was still supported up until a few months back

There are plenty of places which still use UNIX mainframes to drive thinclient frontend terminals. Old doesn't mean bad. There's nothing wrong with mature technology which doesn't crap itself every 5 minutes or leave users bewildered by inexplicable 'designer' choices.