
Microsoft: We've sold 40 million Windows 8 licenses to date - mun2mun
http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-weve-sold-40-million-windows-8-licenses-to-date-7000007990/
======
aresant
Win 8 moves ~40,000,000 licenses in first month. Upgrades are $39.99.

Win 7 moved ~30,000,000 in month one. Upgrades were $120 - 220/upgrade.

Vista moved 20,000,000 first month. Upgrades were $129 - 299.

MSFT is offering the DVD-version of Windows 8 for ~$30/more per copy so let's
just pretend that the fair price for comparison of Windows 8 is $69.99 (since
I assume far more physical media went out of Win 7 in 2009).

So that's still 1/2 the revenue per upgrade they collected in the previous
cycles.

Looking at their revenue by division Windows & Win Live have been on the
decline:

[http://www.tannerhelland.com/wp-content/uploads/Microsoft-
re...](http://www.tannerhelland.com/wp-content/uploads/Microsoft-revenue-by-
division-2010-2012.png)

I wonder how drastically this will impact them - if they see a real, sustained
gain in traction vs. Windows 7 adoption in the 25% range, that's not going to
make up for the shortfall in revenues but certainly would help to lay a
foundation for future growth in mobile / server & tools / business / etc.

I'm not sure I even have a point, just trying to sort through this data and
get a sense of what it means for MSFT macro.

~~~
chc
I don't think cash flow is Microsoft's overriding concern at the moment.
They'll still get plenty of steady income from their corporate cash cows.
Right now, I think Microsoft is more worried about the existential threat of a
world where people are weaned off Windows. They want Windows 8 to be used in
as many places as humanly possible. If they can maintain their ubiquity, their
overall ecosystem is secure. They will gladly trade a little profit from the
consumer OS market to stay entrenched.

~~~
guygurari
If that were true, then I would have also expected them to ease up on the
anti-piracy measures.

~~~
kyriakos
They did. By lowering the price. I used to have 2 PC's running pirated copies
of windows. Not anymore, they are both running Windows 8 I purchased at a
reasonable price of 39.99.

~~~
guygurari
As far as I know that is an upgrade price, which you can only get if you
already own a legitimate copy of a previous version.

~~~
kyriakos
I do have Windows Vista OEM licenses which give me the right to upgrade to 8,
just no windows 7 licenses which i used to run 'illegally'.

But I believe Microsoft knows what they are doing, cause the upgrade
assistance does not check if you are running a legit version. It either means
they were too trusting that users will be running legit versions before
upgrading or it means that they deliberately left this hole in order to get a
revenue from users who would otherwise just install a pirated version of their
new OS.

------
nsns
Which might simply mean that this is the approximate amount of non-Apple
laptops (and desktops?) sold since Win8's launch, because most of them are now
sold only with Win8 licenses [0]. Hardly a mark of success, but of MS's
(doomed?) pervasiveness.

[0] e.g.,
[http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPo...](http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:category.details?current-
catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087&current-category-
id=0E6E3D0084869C3EB4172DA2F965A301)

~~~
brudgers
_"Microsoft had not released any sales figures for Windows 8 other than saying
the company sold 4 million upgrade licenses of the operating system to those
with previous versions of Windows during the first three days it was
available."_

That's 10% of the total in the first three days to existing users.

Including myself.

~~~
dkhenry
If a month has 30 days then that's also 10% of the time period, or another way
of saying it is that sales remained constant over that initial time frame.

------
mtgx
The vast majority of these licenses were sold to OEM's, who now have to "get
rid of them" in the market. So we'll see how long that takes before they ask
for another bulk of licenses from Microsoft. Could be weeks or could be
months. If it's months, next time they'll request much fewer licenses.

------
NZ_Matt
Has anyone else noticed that any pro Microsoft news gets immediately flagged
off the front page? The Hackernews hivemind really is creating its own little
bubble.

<http://hnrankings.info/4839043/>

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melling
We should be able see real Win8 usage numbers in the IE10 stats over the next
couple of months, at least until IE10 ships for Win7.

~~~
robotys
I like this line of thinking. But it still only reflect a portion of Win8 user
as another portion of them will use alternative browser (chrome, ie).

------
ErikAugust
They booted the guy who headed up the Windows product line. They can claim
success and "greatest OS ever" all they want but it's clear to me that MS
isn't thrilled.

~~~
illuminate
He left, he wasn't booted.

------
wheaties
Yeah, I bought one of your licenses Microsoft. I didn't want to buy it. Given
the choice I would not have bought it. And quite clearly as evidenced in my
past week of Twitter I've been trying to get rid of it. Alas, to no avail...

~~~
dangrossman
Considering Microsoft is not reading this, and you don't have a Twitter
account in your profile, would you mind sharing with HN what your message
means? Why did you buy Windows 8 if you didn't want it, and why can't you get
rid of it?

~~~
wheaties
I bought an emergency computer at Best Buy pre-installed with Windows 8. No
matter what I've tried I can not get the thing to start not in Windows. I
can't even drop down to the legacy BIOS to get Linux to boot.

Oh yeah, I also failed the recapcha several times before I could even get into
the computer in the first place. A recapcha when you're first starting...
brilliant. Btw, I'm not an MS hater but I am a Windows 8 hater.

~~~
hnriot
What you describe is a feature of Windows 8, it's to ensure that a trusted
source controls what runs on the hardware. Windows 8 is, as you've discovered,
far more security conscious.

~~~
rbanffy
> it's to ensure that a trusted source controls what runs on the hardware.

Trusted by whom?

------
forgotAgain
If Microsoft wanted to impart real knowledge in pronouncements such as this
they would have clarity in what they say. By not giving a definition of what
they mean by "licenses sold" they are avoiding clarity. It's an example of why
many people, including myself, have lost confidence in everything they say.

~~~
kenjackson
Licenses sold is pretty clear. What else would you like them to say? This is
the figure they've always given. It would seem odd to me if they created some
new metric that we couldn't compare with Win7 and Vista sales.

~~~
zik
Since the vast majority of these licenses are sold to OEMs to build systems it
doesn't reflect anything much. The number sold to actual customers would be a
lot more useful.

~~~
kenjackson
What do you mean? Are you talking about the amount sold directly to consumers
or the amount that get into consumers hands?

The former is uninteresting. The latter would be great, but MS doesn't know
this info (and they've never reported it).

And the channel I suspect is pretty efficient when it comes to license
acquisition, since you don't need to do runs like you do in HW.

------
joelthelion
I wonder how many they actually _sold_. Many are simply bought with new
computers, and quite a few are probably the free upgrades that hardware
vendors were promising for new Windows 7 computers just before the release.

------
kyriakos
What's very important is to know how well the store is doing. The windows
store is the reason they are selling at a lower price than in the past,
expecting a continuous stream of revenue through it.

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arscan
Any news on enterprise adoption of Windows 8? I assume that this will be like
Vista -- many large companies won't bother upgrading. That will be a huge drag
on Windows 8 adoption.

~~~
sliverstorm
I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft is actually already kind of banking on
this. When better to venture towards mobile, than on the cycle that enterprise
is less likely to pick up?

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xutopia
That's all? Their OEM manufacturers alone would account to about that much.

------
dhawalhs
I wonder how many Windows 7 licences were sold in the same period

~~~
arscan
_"How does this compare to Windows 7 sales? Microsoft said it had sold 60
million Windows 7 licenses from the end of October 2009, its launch date, to
the end of January 2010 December 2009. So that's 60 million Windows 7 licenses
sold in two months. So far, Microsoft has sold 40 million licenses of Windows
8 in one month."_

~~~
dhawalhs
By same period I meant since October 26 i.e. since the launch of Windows 8

