Analysts Say Only 59 million of 100 million Windows 8 Licenses Used

Microsoft has been praising its Windows 8 operating system lately and using the fact it has sold 100 million licenses to justify this self-praise. However, analysts aren’t so supportive of Microsoft’s evidence. Patrick Moorhead, a principal analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, suggests that out of those 100 million sold Windows 8 licenses only 59 million are being used.

This is according to the most recent data by Net Applications that shows Windows 8 is only being used 59 million, that is still less than Windows Vista. For reference those same figures also showed Windows 7 runs on 682.2 million PC systems and Windows XP on 584.4 million.

These unused operating systems probably represent people who have purchased pre-built systems and notebooks yet have chosen not to use the pre-installed Windows 8 OS. I know I have seen a lot of reviewers do the trophic “this PC has Windows 8 installed, but we aren’t going to use that” before wiping the OS drive and installing Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate.

Either way this figures are potentially worrying if only 59% of users that acquire Windows 8 actually choose to install it and use it.

What are your thoughts on this? Have you got an unused Windows 8 key laying around somewhere that you have chosen not to use? If the statistics are right then quite a lot of you will have.

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