Computerworld - Microsoft this week said that it had sold 100 million licenses of Windows 8 in the operating system's first six months. But how many copies are being used?
That's a question Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, had at the top of his list after seeing Microsoft's milestone, which was revealed by Tami Reller, the CFO of the Windows division, in a Tuesday blog post and interviews with several media outlets.
"The challenge is figuring out what that actually means," said Moorhead of the 100-million mark. "It doesn't mean that there are that many devices out the door."
For April, Windows 8's average usage share was 4.2% of all Windows PCs, according to Net Applications' data. That number included what Net Applications labeled as "touch" for Windows 8 and Windows RT, those tablets and touch-enabled notebooks that browse the Web from the "Modern" user interface (UI) rather than the mouse-and-keyboard UI of the traditional desktop.
Four-point-two percent of 1.4 billion equals approximately 58.6 million, the number of devices using Windows 8 last month.
Those same calculations also illustrate the huge chore Microsoft and its customers, predominantly enterprises, have in ditching the 12-year-old Windows XP before April 2014's support retirement deadline. Using the same math, XP powers about 584.4 million machines, or well over half a billion PCs.
Estimates peg 59M Windows 8 devices in use - Computerworld
At this rate XP will have in 2 years more users than Windows 8.