Microsoft has announced that it has sold 200 million Windows 8 licenses and the comment came from Tami Reller during the Goldman Sachs Technology & Internet Conference.
This is a massive number by any count as selling 200 million of any type of product or licenses is surely a milestone worth celebrating but it is notable that Microsoft was rather quiet about sales figures as the last update came in May of 2012.
Based on the current rate of sales, from launch to today, Windows 8 is selling at a rate of a little over 420,000 licenses per day. For reference, Microsoft sold roughly 240 million license of Windows 7 in a 12 month time period but it has taken Windows 8 15 months to hit 200 million sales. It’s quite clear that, while 200 million is a massive number, it is at a slower pace than Windows 7.
Reller also noted that Microsoft is working reducing the footprint of Windows so that it will work well on smaller Windows devices, according to Mary Jo Foley, who spotted these nuggets of info while listening to the call.
As Microsoft has adopted its rapid release cadence for Windows, we have already seen one big feature pack launch, Windows 8.1, and another smaller update will arrive in April that is called Windows 8.1 update 1.