Microsoft Has Now Sold 60 Million Windows 8 Licenses

It was announced back in November that Microsoft had sold 40 million Windows 8 licenses in one month. It was a pretty impressive figure at the time, and Microsoft was plenty proud of its early success. Now it’s been a little over two months since the launch of Microsoft’s touch-friendly OS. Is Windows 8 still doing well?

Microsoft announced at CES 2013 that Windows 8 has sold 60 million licenses to date. Before you get too excited, that number includes both upgrades and sales to OEMs. The company didn’t offer any more details on how its 60 million license figure breaks down, but it’s safe to say that OEMs are probably buying the bulk of licenses.

In other good news for the company, Microsoft said that there are now “more than 1,700 certified systems for Windows 8 and Windows RT.” The number of apps on the Windows Store has also quadrupled since launch, and the store just recently surpassed 100 million app downloads.

Microsoft seems pleased with the success of Windows 8 with Reller saying that the OS is “on a similar sales trajectory that [they] saw with Windows 7.” It’s a far different tone compared to a study released early this month that said Windows 8 adoption was behind that of Windows Vista.

Of course, you can’t really compare sales with adoption as the licenses purchased by OEMs may not have made their way into the hands of consumers yet. Until Microsoft or a trusted third party gives us some solid adoption numbers, we’ll continue to just hear about sales instead of adoption. The latter of which is arguably more important in the long run.