14 DAY TRIAL // Reports on Windows 8’s poor sales continue to surface, even though both Windows division boss Tami Reller and CEO Steve Ballmer confirmed that Microsoft had managed to sell 40 million copies of the new OS.
What’s more, figures released by Statecounter and published by Microsoft-news.com reveal that Windows 8 usage has reached a record high on November 28.
The same happened on Black Friday as well, when Windows 8 PCs achieved a record market share of 2.12 percent, according to the same data.
Of course, Windows 8 is yet to challenge Windows 7 and Windows XP, as they both remain the two most popular operating systems on the market.
Statistics provided by Net Application for the week of November 11 have revealed that Windows 7 was the number one choice for computer users, with a market share of 45.59 percent. Windows XP was their second option, as the 11-year old OS still had a share of 39.46 percent.
Although Windows 8 is far from becoming a real challenge for the other operating systems on the market, Microsoft’s new software is clearly increasing its market share every month.
If we are to trust Microsoft’s very own statistics, approximately 40 million Windows 8 copies have already been sold, but the company expects figures to increase in the upcoming months as the PC market is recovering from a long-time collapse.
CEO Steve Ballmer previously said that Microsoft had managed to sell 4 million Windows 8 upgrades in its first weekend on the market, but Redmond sources have suggested otherwise.
While 40 million sold units seems like a pretty good achievement, it was initially believed that Windows 8 failed to meet internal sales projections, so Microsoft’s executives deemed its sales rather disappointing. The declining hardware industry was blamed for the slow debut of Windows 8, as the lack of devices running the new OS wasn’t giving users too many options.