Ballmer Claims 4 Million Windows 8 Upgrades Since Friday

Microsoft Windows 8, launched on Friday, is off to a flying start, according to CEO Steve Ballmer, claiming that sales are going faster than the launch sales for Windows 7.

Already, four million users have upgraded to the new version, he told a Windows 8 event at the Build 2012 conference on Monday to launch the Windows 8 software developers’ kit (SDK). He made the claim about the speed of the sales, at the Windows Phone 8 launch, which he included in a busy week of Microsoft product launches.

Queues for Windows 8?

“We’re seeing preliminary demand well above where we were with Windows 7, which is gratifying,” Ballmer told the press at the Windows Phone launch, describing queues at US stores to see and feel the touch-oriented version of Windows, which is designed to run on both tablets and PCs.

Our reporter at the midnight launch, in London’s Tottenham Court Road found that users were more keen to see the Microsoft Surface tablet which made its UK debut there, along with free headphones and cheap laptops provided by retailer Currys.

The four million claim sounds impressive, but Charles Arthur of the Guardian points out that Microsoft normally sells around 90 million copies of Windows per quarter, or 1m per day, implying the figure is pretty much business as usual – despite the fact that Windows 8 is new.

Apple’s most recent update to its Mac OS X computer operating system, Mountain Lion, was downloaded three million times in four days. the comparison doesn’t make a lot of sense, but Apple achieved a vastly higher rate of adoption, since Apple Macs make up only around 4 percent of the installed base of personal computers. Since there are 25 times as many PCs, it looks like Mountain Lion was taken up 25 times faster per thousand systems.

Both updates were priced cheaply (£15 and £13 for Windows 8 and Mountain Lion, respectively) to encourage rapid take-up.

A recent TechWeekEurope poll found that only ten percent of organisations have any immediate plans to upgrade to Windows 8, while about 64 percent are going to stick to Windows 7 or Windows XP.

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