Sales of Windows 8 have reached an important milestone, with 200 million licenses sold of Microsoft’s latest offering. Executive Vice President of Marketing Tami Reller let the sales numbers slip during a talk at Goldman Sachs Technology & Internet Conference, but was later confirmed by Microsoft. The news comes about eight months after the 100 million sales mark had been reached for the operating system in May, a disappointing result. At the same point in its development history, Windows 7 had sold significantly more copies..
In a statement to ZDNet a spokesperson for Microsoft confirmed the number Reller gave during the talk. The spokesperson went on to expand on the figures saying that the “number includes Windows licenses that ship on a new tablet or PC, as well as upgrades to Windows 8. The figure does not include volume license sales to enterprise.”
It took about 16 months for Windows 8 to hit the 200 million sales mark, a number that Windows 7 surpassed in 12 months with 240 million in sales. Sales of Windows 8, even with the 8.1 update fixing many of the issues that have kept people from migrating, may not match the 350 million sales milestone that Windows 7 hit in the first year and a half of its release.
