Windows 8 First six months’ sales – A flop show?

Windows 8 First six months’ sales – A flop show?

In the first six months of being in the market, more than a hundred million copies of Windows 8 were sold. The Microsoft disclosure also confirmed that the Windows Blue update(Windows 8.1 it’s officially called now) would be available in the latter part of the year, as a part of the company’s response to the customer feedback it has been flooded with after Windows 8’s release. Other than the number of Windows 8 licenses mentioned, the company also claimed that since the launch, the number of apps in Windows Stores had grown six times. There were  250 million app downloads, with 90% of all apps getting downloaded every month

Microsoft was also picking up users with its cloud services, with an alleged 250 million SkyDrive users, 400 million Outlook.com users, and active Microsoft Accounts running into 700 million. The changeover to Outlook.com from Hotmail has been completed and all users are now using their new email platform weeks ahead of schedule. Microsoft has talked for about the third time on the number of Windows 8 units it has shifted: 40 million copies sold in the 1stmonth, which grew to 60 million after a month. Since then, the pace seems to have slowed down with only 40 million copies being sold in the last 4 months. This is not really so unusual, as in the past, operating systems saw an initial surge in sales and then leveled off.

So is the picture good or bad for Microsoft? Its critics will recall that Windows 7 sales had picked up much quicker, and say that Windows 8 is a failure. Microsoft, however, is upbeat, saying that Windows 8 represents a huge change, and such changes take their time. And actually, the hundred million figure does point to the fact that the PC is not quite dead yet, and actually represents a higher figure than iPad sales in the last quarter, and it is the iPad which is supposed to represent the end of the PC and hence of Windows!