40M Windows 8 Licenses Sold In One Month

[heatlesssun]

From a UI standpoint, my biggest gripe is the charms bar. It is annoying and shows Windows 8's lack of "polish" at this point. Far too many things are spread between the Charms bar Setting screen and the standard Control Panel UI. Some are only available from one, some from the other. If everything was still available in the old Control Panel UI, then I could just disable the Charms bar totally -- which would be my preference! On a multi-monitor setup, the Charms bar is a royal pain -- hitting the edge of the screen with a mouse isn't as simple as it should be. So, when I want the Charms bar to come up, it usually doesn't, but it seems like almost every time I go to close a maximized program with the "X", the Charms bar inevitably comes up instead.

There is a method to how this works I think. All of the options that have been available in the past along with new ones for things that would tend to be desktop oriented like File History are in the desktop Control Panel. New things that one would need quick access to on tablets are in the Settings Metro app like the lock screen, onscreen keyboard and Metro app settings.

Lastly, the Metro/Modern and multitasking sucks bad. The split screen interface just isn't efficient and looks crappy. Just make the Metro/Modern apps run in a standard Window and allow multiple ones at a time. I've actually got this more or less working with a customized video driver so that the Metro apps actually thing they are running full screen on a separate monitor, but it's still more wasteful of resources than I like and a bit buggy (which I haven't had time to work on fixing recently as I've been swamped with work at the moment [ARM Linux kernel drivers]).

The thing is though that when you add windowing you add a lot of other complexity on the UI and app side. Metro apps are meant to scale well across and defined set of resolutions and DPIs as perfect scaling across all resolutions and DPIs is a VERY difficult thing to do for all applications. Furthermore when you add resizable windows to a touch UI you end up with a desktop oriented UI that people have never been that found of on Windows tablets in the past. You could improve it but I think that you have to be very careful about doing something like that.

That said, I'm finding that Metro snap to be very neat on a tablet for apps that support the view well.

 

[BloodyIron]

Sold to vendors does not mean sold to end users. This is actually a typical business practice Microsoft has used repeatedly with the Xbox line of product.

 

[pxc]

Microsoft's customers are primarily OEMs. Nice way to move the goalposts when you don't like the news.

Anyways, the hold time for inventory (OEMs to stores and stores to customers) is generally not very long. Of course you can revisit the strength of Win8 sales month by month to see if it holds up vs prior releases. However, comparing these sales numbers to others (Win7, Vista, XP) at the same point after release is interesting.

Thy grapes be sour.

 

[heatlesssun]

Sold to vendors does not mean sold to end users.

Correct, sold only means sold. The money has changed hands and that's all that Microsoft is really counting here and it's no different than when Microsoft has announced numbers for other versions of Windows in the past.

 

[Gorankar]

It doesn't count if you bought the first 39M copies in an orgasmic frenzy all for yourself.

 

[SkribbelKat]

Not even close man. The Networking issues were never fixed.

What networking issues? I use Vista to this day and I have none of the issues people are attributing to it.

I would have no issues at all if I ever got off my fat ass and replaced my 8 year old hard drive that I use for my OS install.

I'm still using Vista and just installed a fresh copy on my new gaming desktop because I had it laying around. I've been using it for a long time and it's never given me any problems with networking ever. I don't know what the big deal is with this thing about networking because I've never experienced it. I have had problems with the print spooler in Vista, but it's mostly because of junky printer drivers which are totally not Microsoft's fault.

I have used window xp, Vista, and 7. I find that window Vista is the best in term of functions. Unfortunately, majority of consumers didn't give it a second chance.

+1...I really do like Vista and it's just not a bad operating system. I'm okay with pretty much anything on the NT side that's Win2000 or newer.

 

[Trimlock]

These 'new' bugs from vista keep on coming! Holy crap what networking error, I had a blast networking with Vista.

Although at times on large networks it would hang up once in a blue moon while setting up the settings.

 

[faugusztin]

The only "networking" problem i can think of is the same one which is present in Windows 7 and 8 too - sometimes the Ethernet and/or WiFi gets their DHCP address too slow, so some startup apps and/or services relying on network connectivity report errors because they cannot connect to whatever server they are connecting to.

 

[daglesj]

The only "networking" problem i can think of is the same one which is present in Windows 7 and 8 too - sometimes the Ethernet and/or WiFi gets their DHCP address too slow, so some startup apps and/or services relying on network connectivity report errors because they cannot connect to whatever server they are connecting to.

You mean the old "some network drives could not be connected" warning when in fact 2 seconds later they are.

Always looks so slick that.

 

[H@RD5]

I find it hard to believe that the vast majority of these licenses aren't OEM's for the likes of Dell, HP, ect.

I doubt Micro$oft will ever release the honest numbers showing this to be true though.

 

[msny]

Despite all the complaining about Windows 8 being "too confusing," Microsoft's latest OS has sold forty million licenses in just one month. That puts it ahead of Windows 7 at the same stage.

No doubt forced sales, were people given a choice?

 

[devil22]

I find it hard to believe that the vast majority of these licenses aren't OEM's for the likes of Dell, HP, ect.

I doubt Micro$oft will ever release the honest numbers showing this to be true though.

MS has, 97%-98% are OEM sales, 2%-3% are upgrades historically for all Windows versions. I doubt it changed now. I fail to see how this is relevant however.

No doubt forced sales, were people given a choice?

A choice of what? A thousand OSes? Or just your favorite alternative? The choice is implied, there are companies who sell Linux computers, there's Apple computers, and various others. These companies are not government agencies, they can offer what they like, they choose to sell windows computers because that's what people want. People are free to download and install Linux, etc. for free if they don't want it, almost none do.

 

[pelo]

The 40m number refers to the total sales and a vast majority of those are OEM. If you take into account the sales of products by OEMs, the shipments are down 9% in desktop and 24% in laptop. So, no, MS is just being sneaky in how they're reporting the sales figures

On the heels of Microsoft execs crowing about selling 40 million Windows 8 licenses in its first month of availability, analysts at NPD are putting that figure more in context.


Since the Windows 8 launch on October 26, the number of Windows devices sold at retail have fallen 21 percent vs. the same period last year, according to a November 29 NPD press release. Desktop sales are down nine percent compared to a year ago; notebook sales are down 24 percent compared to a year ago.

http://www.zdnet.com/windows-8-off-to-a-slow-start-with-consumers-in-month-one-says-npd-7000008094/

 

[Tudz]

MS has, 97%-98% are OEM sales, 2%-3% are upgrades historically for all Windows versions. I doubt it changed now. I fail to see how this is relevant however.

It's relevant because it doesn't reflect actual consumers walking in to a store and buying a product. When people bitch about or praise COD sales, it's genuine, because you know it's actual gamers/suckers walking in to a store and buying the game (or getting it online, whatever).

Of course it's still relatable to previous data which was taken the same way, but not in a "haha, look how popular this is", it's relatable in the "haha, look how many systems OEMs plan to make and thus needed that many licences".

 

[pelo]

It's relevant because it doesn't reflect actual consumers walking in to a store and buying a product. When people bitch about or praise COD sales, it's genuine, because you know it's actual gamers/suckers walking in to a store and buying the game (or getting it online, whatever).

Of course it's still relatable to previous data which was taken the same way, but not in a "haha, look how popular this is", it's relatable in the "haha, look how many systems OEMs plan to make and thus needed that many licences".

It includes volume licensing as well and doesn't denote whether the volume licensee is actually using Win8. For example, a corporation renegotiating their Windows licenses and "buying Windows 8" but actually using Windows 7.

The 40m number refers to the number of Win8 licenses MS has sold overall, spread across the entire spectrum of market segments. If you're counting the number that have made their way into consumers hands (or businesses) then that number is significantly smaller considering the actual sales figures of traditional Windows-based products (PC) has been lower than last year at this time.

It is a tablet/phone OS at heart, though, so how well it does in the PC space isn't as important as how well their smartphones and tablets do.

 

[heatlesssun]

The 40m number refers to the total sales and a vast majority of those are OEM. If you take into account the sales of products by OEMs, the shipments are down 9% in desktop and 24% in laptop. So, no, MS is just being sneaky in how they're reporting the sales figures

If they are being sneaky with these Windows 8 sales figures then it's always been sneaky with Windows sales figures as this number is being reported just has it always has from what I can tell, just like 7. If you note a difference in how this number is being reported compared to the past please enlighten us.

That said, as I posted a couple of weeks ago, Microsoft is rumored to have been saying privately that PC hardware sales are well below their expectations and given the very small number of Windows 8 tablets and hybrids, especially Clover Trail devices which will probably be the bulk of these kinds of devices, it's not surprising that PC sales are very weak at the moment. However the good news is that there must be a lot more upgrades going out the door to make up for the current slack in PC hardware attached Windows 8 licenses.

With a number of Windows launches in the history books, it can be interesting to see what people have said about them in the past. This one is extremely interesting I think: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2355426,00.asp NPD: Vista Launch Sold More PCs than Windows 7

So I think what we're seeing here is just a saturation of the PC market more than anything, even the mighty 7 seemed to have a problem pushing hardware when launched. And even on this forum there are a lot of folks that re reporting just how zippy Windows 8 is and how it has breathed new life into older hardware, so that's not exactly going to sell more PCs.

Growing PC sales numbers boil down to new hardware, particularly of the tablet, hybrid and touch kind. The PC market is saturated with cheap crap, no OS is going to sell more of that junk.

 

[Outamyhead]

Are they counting sales of licenses to manufacturers as well?

 

[Void]

Are they counting sales of licenses to manufacturers as well?

They are counting them all, just like they did with Windows 7. This includes ALL sales regardless of who it is buying, OEM's, or retail.

The high sales that were reported for Windows 7 were also gathered the same way .