Microsoft: 60 million copies of Windows 8 sold to date
How successful is the Windows 8 operating system? One way to find out is to compare its performance with previous Microsoft operating systems, and while situations are not identical, doing so provides us with a rough ballpark on that. So, Microsoft today announced that the company has sold 60 million licenses of the Windows 8 operating system to date which includes both upgrades and sales to OEMs for new devices.
Windows Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Financial Officer Tami Reller said that this is a "similar sales trajectory" as that of Windows 7. And it seems so, considering that Windows 7 launched at around the same time three years ago and managed to sell 60 million copies by the end of January. But, is Windows 8 really more popular than Windows 7 or at least equally so?
The first issue that I have with the numbers is that we do not know if they cover equal grounds. While the 60 million copies of Windows 8 include upgrades and sales to OEMs, we do not know if this is also the case for the Windows 7 figure as it is not mentioned in the article. The mentioning of sales to OEMs however indicates that at least some of the licenses may not yet have been sold to end customers, as it includes machines that have been assembled and shipped but not yet sold or deployed.
The second aspect that needs to be considered is pricing. Windows 8 Pro upgrades are available for $39.99 until the end of January 2013 for any version of Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7. Compare that to the promotional price of $99.99 for Windows 7 Professional or even the Windows 7 Home Premium price of $49.99 during the Windows 7 pre-order promotion.
The digital download of the upgrade to Windows 8 is available for half the price that the comparable Windows 7 upgrade offer was available for which most certainly did increase sales of Windows 8 licenses. By how much? We do not know. What we do not know however is that Microsoft's revenue per license will be lower for every copy of Windows 8 the company sells during the promotion than it has been during the Windows 7 promotional sale. Then again, the Windows Store may make up for that and it will be interesting to see how much revenue Microsoft generates from it and how that changes over time. Reller confirmed in the same article that the store has seen more than 100 million app downloads.
Despite that, it seems that Windows 8 is doing considerable well sales-wise even though it is likely that at least some users made the decision to buy upgrades for the promotional price without installing them yet on any of their PCs. Still, a license sold is a license sold and that's what counts.
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What mental age of reader are you targeting with the first sentence? 10?
Why not write an article on how to *avoid* upgrading from W10 to W11. Analogous to those like me who avoided upgrading from 7 to 10 for as long as possible.
If your paymaster Microsoft permits it, of course.
5. Rufus
6. Ventoy
PS. I hate reading these “SEO optimized” articles.
I used Rufus to create an installer for a 6th gen intel i5 that had MBR. It upgraded using Setup. No issues except for Win 11 always prompting me to replace my local account. Still using Win 10 Pro on all my other PCs to avoid the bullying.
bit pointless to upgrade for the sake of upgrading as you never know when you’ll get locked out because ms might suddenly not provide updates to unsupported systems.
ps…. time travelling?
written. Jan 15, 2023
Updated • Jan 13, 2023
This happens when you schedule a post in WordPress and update it before setting the publication date.
Anyone willing to downgrade to this awful OS must like inflicting themselves with harm.
I have become convinced now that anybody who has no qualms with using Windows 11/10 must fit into one of the following brackets:
1) Too young to remember a time before W10 and W11 (doesn’t know better)
2) Wants to play the latest games on their PC above anything else (or deeply needs some software which already dropped W7 support)
3) Doesn’t know too much about how computers work, worried that they’d be absolutely lost and in trouble without the “”latest security””
4) Microsoft apologist that tries to justify that the latest “features” and “changes” are actually a good thing, that improve Windows
5) Uses their computer to do a bare minimum of like 3 different things, browse web, check emails, etc, so really doesn’t fuss
Obviously that doesn’t cover everyone, there’s also the category that:
6) Actually liked W7 more than 10, and held out as long as possible before switching, begrudgingly uses 10 now
Have I missed any group off this list?
You have missed in this group just about any professional user that uses business software like CAD programs or ERP Programs which are 99% of all professional users from this list.
Linux doesn’t help anyone who is not a linux kid and apple is just a fancy facebook machine.
Microsoft has removed KB5029351 update
only from windows update though
KB5029351 is still available from the ms update catalog site
1. This update is labaled as PREVIEW if it causes issues to unintelligent people, then they shouldn’t have allowed Preview updates ot install.
2. I have installed it in a 11 years old computer, and no problems at all.
3. Making a big drama over a bluescreen for an updated labeled as preview is ridiculous.
This is probably another BS internet drama where people ran programs and scripts that modified the registry until they broke Windows, just for removing stuff that they weren’t even using just for the sake of it.
Maybe people should stop playing geeks and actually either use Windows 10 or Windows 11, but don’t try to modify things just for the sake of it.
Sometimes removing or stopping things (like defender is a perfect example) only need intelligence, not scripts or 3rd party programs that might mess with windows.
Windows 11 was a pointless release, it was just created because some of the Windows team wanted to boost sales with some sort of new and improved Windows 10. Instead, Microsoft cannot support one version well let alone two.
Windows 11 is the worst ugly shame by Microsoft ever. They should release with every new W11 version a complete free version of Starallback inside just to make this sh** OS functionally again.
motherboard maker MSI has recently released a statement regarding the “unsupported processor” blue screen error for their boards using Intel 600/700 series chipsets & to avoid the KB5029351 Win11 update:
https://www.msi.com/news/detail/MSI-On–UNSUPPORTED-PROCESSOR–Error-Message-of-Windows-11-Update-KB5029351-Preview-142215
check out the following recent articles:
Neowin – Microsoft puts little blame on its Windows update after UNSUPPORTED PROCESSOR BSOD bug:
https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-puts-little-blame-on-its-windows-update-after-unsupported-processor-bsod-bug/
BleepingComputer – Microsoft blames ‘unsupported processor’ blue screens on OEM vendors:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-blames-unsupported-processor-blue-screens-on-oem-vendors/
While there may be changes or updates to the Windows 10 Store for Business and Education in the future, it is premature to conclude that it will be discontinued based solely on rumors.
My advice, I left win 15 years ago. Now I’m a happy linux user (linuxmint) but there is Centos, Fedora, Ubuntu depending on your needs.
motherboard maker MSI has recently released new BIOS/firmware updates for their Intel 600 & 700 series motherboards to fix the “UNSUPPORTED_PROCESSOR” problem (Sept. 6):
https://www.msi.com/news/detail/Updated-BIOS-fixes-Error-Message–UNSUPPORTED-PROCESSOR–caused-BSOD-on-MSI-s-Intel-700-and-600-Series-Motherboards-142277