Okay, so what does that tell one about 8.1? Trying to boost numbers anyway they can? But really, what is Microsoft doing that is new? I received my 8.1 for free because I had 8 and took the free update to 8.1.
I don't think they meant upgrade from W8 to 8.1 but from W7 to 8.1.
For the first part of your statement, yes, that's what they implied, That may be MS goal for long time now. Long time ago, when Billy was in complete charge, somebody asked if he was concerned of so many windows users running illegal copies he replied something in the order of : "We can live of revenues from what copies we sell, and more people runs Windows, the better". Indeed MS is not very active in persecuting illegal users (at lest nowhere close to entertainment industry). Also they gave free licenses to many a school in third world (and not so third) countries, also cheap, general use licenses to many universities , their students and also NGOs (I have one of the licenses given to them to distribute).
So yes, they are trying to get windows in as many computers they can, it's a good policy and many should be grateful for that. It keeps the base of programs large and programs, their number and quality, are the ones that do the work, OS is just a go-between. Any pure OS, without software would not last a day.
1995 while in Toronto, I waited in a store 'till 2 o'clock in the morning for them to start selling Win95 and I was running beta version for over a year. That beta was usable for long time after official release and was "richer" than release version because of some flap with Norton which was resolved short time later.