According to the statistics, Windows 7 is the most-used operating system in the world, which just barely in September outranked the unbeatable Windows XP, whose days are counted now that Microsoft will stop providing support for the OS version starting April 8, 2014. Even still, the first data indicate that Windows 8 sales are doing well. With all this in mind, Microsoft has announced that they will stop selling computers with Windows 7 preinstalled in 2014.
Apparently, the company at Redmond is trying to push users to start using Windows 8. The next step is to withdraw progressively the previous edition from stores, which is why Microsoft can only sell computers with Windows 7 preinstalled until October of 2014.
Currently, 80% of those who acquire a license for a Windows operating system choose machines that are running Windows 7 preinstalled. This doesn’t mean that Windows 8 is doing poorly, either. In fact, Microsoft sold 40 million Windows 8 licences during the software’s first month of being released on October 26th.
It’s important to note that this data was released by Tami Reller, Financial Director of Marketing at Microsoft, and are the only official numbers that have surfaced. We know that they don’t include the sales figures for the new Surface and Surface Pro tablets, which have Windows 8 RT preinstalled, so that number most likely doesn’t represent the actual figures.
Nonetheless, if we consider the 40 million licenses sold as a point of reference for comparison with what Windows 7 achieved during its first month of being released in 2009, Windows 8 has seen 25% less sales. In fact, the process cannot increase any faster because there are commercial agreements that keep the company from taking the previous operating system off the market until the new one has been in place for two full years. That being said, and just as it happened with Windows XP, even when it is no longer on the market, Windows 7 will continue to be the most-used operating system for many more years.
