4 million Windows 8 licenses sold in 3 days; year-end target 400 million

Ballmer and company are reporting that they have sold 4 million licenses for Windows 8 Pro in just 3 days, with over tens of millions of OEM licenses sold till date. Now they are hoping to sell 400 million new Windows 8 licenses within the year. Tall and bold claims, but we wouldn’t be surprised if they actually managed to achieve this goal, given their new super low pricing for the OS (and the fact that it’s a single variant and not 8 fragmented ones with different pricing).

 

Besides the $40 upgrade price for Windows 8 Pro, Microsoft also extended an even better offer to those who bought their Windows certified machines after June 2nd this year, allowing them to get the swanky new OS for just $15. Then there was the glitch in this upgrade policy that probably allowed several hundred (or even more) to get Windows 8 Pro for the cheap pricing even without being eligible. Don’t worry, MS has fixed this bug now.

 

Steve Ballmer shared the impressive numbers with the attendees of Microsoft’s Build Conference, most notably in a bid to lure developers into making apps for Windows 8, Windows 8 RT and Windows Phone 8. This also falls in line with the fact that for 8 days (starting day before) registration for a MS Developer account will cost only $8 for a whole year.

 

Given the wide gap between Windows and OSX user base, 4 million copies in 3 days doesn’t seem like too big an achievement, given that OSX clocked in 3 million downloads in 4 days. However, we are pretty hopeful that with the new pricing, and a generally good-looking and stable OS, Microsoft will at least get close to their goal of 400 million sold licenses within the year.