Windows 8 reaches 200 million licenses sold

15 months after its launch, the latest Microsoft operating system Windows 8 has just passed the 200 million licenses sold. This is much less than Windows 7 which had achieved 240 million in one year.

The announcement was made ​​by Tami Reller, patron marketing company, during a technology forum organized by Goldman Sachs. This is the first figure released by Microsoft for more than 6 months. If sales are actually disappointing in comparison to what happened to Windows 7, however, must reflect a general decline in PC sales in favor of tablets and smartphones.

But the most annoying for Microsoft is the low rate of adoption and use of the system. Indeed, if Windows 8 now comes standard with PCs, many users leave the license on the shelf and continue to work with Windows 7 or lower versions.

 

According to figures provided by Netmarketshare, the users of Windows 8 or 8.1 would be 11% against 48% for Windows 7 and 29% for Windows XP that accuses more than 10 years of age. Total Windows 7 has sold 450 million copies. Moreover, it seems that the pace of sales continues to decline like the PC market and the tablet surface 2 remains too marginal to face iPad and Android tablets to reverse the trend, at least for the moment.

 

A new update called Windows 8.1 update 1 will be released in later this month of April. Leaks regarding improvements have multiplied on the web in recent weeks. Improvements would include a reduction in disk usage that is to say, an optimization of operation and more intuitive user interface for all those and they are still many using keyboard and mouse not touch interface.