Windows 8.x is Microsoft's second fastest selling OS ever


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Heres something you wont see in the news (yet): Win 8 is Microsoft's second most successful OS release.

After the announcement from MS that Windows 8 has sold 200 million licenses so far i looked at how well each previous Windows OS has sold...
 

  • Win 7 sold 240 million licenses in 1 year. It sold a average of 20 million licenses each year, for 3 years in a row.
     
  • Vista sold 180 million licenses in 19 months (or 22 months if we include the 3 month Vista coupon offer before release). In 48 months Vista sold a average of 8 million licenses a month.
     
  • XP is hard to find any real details on... but MS announced it sold 17 million licenses in the first 2 months (8.5 million for each of those months).
    An IDC analyst estimated that 400 million XP copies were in use in January 2006, about 50 months after the OS's launch which is roughly a average of 8 million XP licenses a month - same as Vista in about the same time period.
     
  • And Win 8/8.1 has sold 200 million licenses in 18 months. Which is a average of 11.1 million licenses a month.


These are all for Windows licenses sold. MS only ever announce license sales so it's a fair comparison.
And i've not included sales on any Windows OS's before XP as theres no way they would have sold in the same numbers anyway (and it's hard to find details).
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Do you really believe in this propoganda. Installing Win 8 on OEMs computer does not mean any sale. These number means nothing. It will be same as producing billions of inventory and putting it on store and then claiming You sold billion inventory. It is uselss to even care to explain further. To all those who really take these number at face value, it does no harm to live delusional.

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Do you really believe in this propoganda. Installing Win 8 on OEMs computer does not mean any sale. These number means nothing. It will be same as producing billions of inventory and putting it on store and then claiming You sold billion inventory. It is uselss to even care to explain further. To all those who really take these number at face value, it does no harm to live delusional.

So you have this idea that OEMs bought 100 million copies of Windows 8, only to store them away and not sell anything...and then continued to purchase Windows 8 licenses over a period of several months, until they doubled the number of licenses in their inventory?

I think this is implausible.

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Interesting. I wonder how much is OEM and how much is Retail/Volume License. Regardless Windows 8 is doing well despite what the small percentage of people that hate it for no reason here on the internet.

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Do you really believe in this propoganda. Installing Win 8 on OEMs computer does not mean any sale. These number means nothing. It will be same as producing billions of inventory and putting it on store and then claiming You sold billion inventory. It is uselss to even care to explain further. To all those who really take these number at face value, it does no harm to live delusional.

 

Its the same metric used to measure Windows 7 sales! Of course this doesn't show how many users there are, but OEMs must be selling them if they've ordered 200+ million of them.

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Do you really believe in this propoganda. Installing Win 8 on OEMs computer does not mean any sale. These number means nothing. It will be same as producing billions of inventory and putting it on store and then claiming You sold billion inventory. It is uselss to even care to explain further. To all those who really take these number at face value, it does no harm to live delusional.

 

MS has used the same system for all of eternity, the numbers are directly comparable.

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So you have this idea that OEMs bought 100 million copies of Windows 8, only to store them away and not sell anything...and then continued to purchase Windows 8 licenses over a period of several months, until they doubled the number of licenses in their inventory?

I think this is implausible.

Changes to the way Microsoft licenses Windows to OEMs pushes this number up artificially...

The Windows license is now required to be affixed into the computer BIOS during manufacturing. Compared to previously being done only at shipping. Previously OEM had the flexibility to have machines built, but not licensed if they hadn't yet shipped them or later decided to scrap them.

This also leads to organizations that are purchasing and installing Windows 7 on machines having the Windows 8 license purchased and activated in the BIOS.

I would argue the metric isn't fairly compatible between releases anymore due to changes such as these.

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Well it was a nice try to show how 8 compares to previous versions, but as you can see, people are ready to pounce on you and explain why its futile.

I guess someone else needs to come up with numbers we can compare without being shot down. Or maybe that is impossible.

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Changes to the way Microsoft licenses Windows to OEMs pushes this number up artificially...

The Windows license is now required to be affixed into the computer BIOS during manufacturing. Compared to previously being done only at shipping. Previously OEM had the flexibility to have machines built, but not licensed if they hadn't yet shipped them or later decided to scrap them.

This also leads to organizations that are purchasing and installing Windows 7 on machines having the Windows 8 license purchased and activated in the BIOS.

I would argue the metric isn't fairly compatible between releases anymore due to changes such as these.

 

That is interesting, I was unaware of this. MS licensing is always a difficult issue. It is really bad in the the business side of things. When buying a PC from an OEM it comes with a license, but then you reinstall the OS with a SOE for the business with a VLK, what happens to the original license. It will go down as an OS sale to MS.

 

Their licenseing model is bad, they are getting better for smaller business's with their SPLA licensing. 

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Some people have such sad lives that they have to bring down others to their level regardless if it is an individual or a company/ies, they just cannot stand to see or even hear that womeone or something is doing okay. . .truly sad.

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A weak attempt on Microsoft's part to restore Windows 8 some credits. Its a good OS and when Treshold arrives, I will migrate from Windows 7. :shiftyninja:

MS learned from Vista that the OS transition and development are to be made in a slow and safe manner, compatibility wise. Instead of providing us a full blown OS wich brings compatibility problems they chose to release updates until their platform and features are stable enough.

This OS is not complete yet lads. 

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Those numbers start getting tricky when you factor in Volume Licences.

Example of my previous company a year ago:

The company only uses Windows XP.

They bought on average 600 desktops a year that came with Windows 7 licences, which were never used. Now they come with Windows 8 licences, which are also not used.

So, for an average of 4 years, they actually bought 3000 Win7 licences that aren't used, since they are on Win XP.

My current company is the same. Now the HP machines all come with Win8 but we use Win7.

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Do you really believe in this propoganda. Installing Win 8 on OEMs computer does not mean any sale. These number means nothing. It will be same as producing billions of inventory and putting it on store and then claiming You sold billion inventory. It is uselss to even care to explain further. To all those who really take these number at face value, it does no harm to live delusional.

It means everything, if you think selling an OEM license isn't a sale then I want to live where you live if they are free :p

 

There's also a difference in wording to take into account, Microsoft could have said they have shipped 200 million licenses (totally different thing) but they said they've sold 200 million licenses.

 

How often do we hear Apple, Samsung  or Nokia announcing they have shipped x million devices, totally different thing if they are indeed sitting on store shelves or in warehouses unsold ;)

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Just remembered something else. You did the average of the Windows versions and then compare the sales on a monthly basis. If you do that, you have to do the average for the same time period. You can't do the average of one product over many years, another half that time and the other even less, but then still compare the monthly average. That gives you bogus results.

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Just remembered something else. You did the average of the Windows versions and then compare the sales on a monthly basis. If you do that, you have to do the average for the same time period. You can't do the average of one product over many years, another half that time and the other even less, but then still compare the monthly average. That gives you bogus results.

That's a fair statement, however consider the fact that the OP states that 50 months after release Windows XP had just over 400 million active devices. Today we are 16 months into Windows 8's product cycle and it's already over 200 million licenses sold. True, we are comparing oranges with tangerines when talking about active devices versus licenses sold, however I would imagine that the margin of error is relatively small.

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I'm sorry, but this nonsense is utter horseploppy.

When win95 was released, people were lined up around the block, all over the place.

 

About the only os that did worse than the 8s, was vista.

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It's funny/sad (I'm not really sure which one it is) to see how people have no issue accepting the numbers for Win 7 because they like the OS, but go absolutely bunkers when you show them that Win 8, the OS they loath, is actually doing pretty well either.

 

MS has always used the same way of announcing their sales of their OS's so why is it ok for Win7 but wrong for Win8?

 

Biased much?

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Changes to the way Microsoft licenses Windows to OEMs pushes this number up artificially...

The Windows license is now required to be affixed into the computer BIOS during manufacturing. Compared to previously being done only at shipping. Previously OEM had the flexibility to have machines built, but not licensed if they hadn't yet shipped them or later decided to scrap them.

This also leads to organizations that are purchasing and installing Windows 7 on machines having the Windows 8 license purchased and activated in the BIOS.

I would argue the metric isn't fairly compatible between releases anymore due to changes such as these.

 

I don't disagree. But I think license in the BIOS is a good thing for consumers. I would like the option, at home, to save it in my BIOS on my desktop.

It's funny/sad (I'm not really sure which one it is) to see how people have no issue accepting the numbers for Win 7 because they like the OS, but go absolutely bunkers when you show them that Win 8, the OS they loath, is actually doing pretty well either.

 

MS has always used the same way of announcing their sales of their OS's so why is it ok for Win7 but wrong for Win8?

 

Biased much?

 

Could be that people are very aware this time around, that many are not using it, and after years of experience, they know how the numbers game works. We have an EA and are just completing the full Windows 7 rollout but have renewed and own Windows 8 licenses for the entire enterprise.

 

PS4 trounces XB1 and Microsoft chooses not to quantify sales for that month? It's a game, they all do it.

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Just remembered something else. You did the average of the Windows versions and then compare the sales on a monthly basis. If you do that, you have to do the average for the same time period. You can't do the average of one product over many years, another half that time and the other even less, but then still compare the monthly average. That gives you bogus results.

We can compare Vista, 7 and 8 pretty fairly. The main problem is XP because theres few sales figures.

Win 7 consistently sold around 240 million licenses a year for atleast 3 years, thats a average of 20 million each year or every 18 months, its makes no difference.

Vista sold 180 million in 19 months. If you just average out the sales for them 19 months, thats 9 million a month. Or we can say 22 months if we include the 3 month Vista coupon offer before release, which then works out to a average of 8 million a month.

So we know how many 7 and 8 licenses were sold in 18 months, and we know how many Vista licenses sold in roughly the same time.

We also know that XP got off to a bad start and sold 17 million in two months, so it's highly unlikely XP would have sold more than Windows 8's 200 million in 18 months. Even Vista had a better start than XP.

 

I'm sorry, but this nonsense is utter horseploppy.

When win95 was released, people were lined up around the block, all over the place.

 

About the only os that did worse than the 8s, was vista.

Do you honestly think there was even close to as many PC/Windows sales when Windows 95 came out and PC's cost thousands just for a low end computer and few consumers even had a PC?? Common sense alone answers this. Theres also the fact that XP was Microsoft's best ever selling OS at the time.

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I made a mistake about Win 8 in my posts. It's been on sale for roughly 15.5 months (i originally said 18 months).
So on average Win 8 sold 12.9 million licenses a month, so that makes sales even better, and it's way better than Vista sold in the same time period (and with almost certainty XP as well).

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