60 million copies of Windows 8 sold according to Microsoft

The day before the official start of CeBIT 2013, Microsoft held a press conference where they spoke about their latest services, hardware and of course software. The interesting part however comes from Christian Illek, Microsoft Germanys Managing Director, who said that Windows 8 had sold a whopping 60 million copies, which by our count sounds a little ambitious.

He continued with claims that Windows 8 has had a faster start than Windows 7 and the only way this would be remotely true is if Microsoft counted upgrade copies, OEM PC sales and maybe even Windows RT into the mix to pad out the numbers, its also worth pointing out that for an extended time Microsoft was selling the upgrade copies of Windows 8 for as little as £15.00 here in the UK, which is essentially giving it away.

I’m not knocking Microsoft for this, I’m sure there is some truth to the numbers under a few white lies, but there is no denying that Windows 8 is slowly but surely gaining traction on the global markets and its OEM brands that are really going to be pushing this forward in 2013, especially with the launch of the Surface Pro which has apparently sold out of the 128GB model, could this bring Microsoft back in to the tablet game? Only time will tell.