Windows 8 sells 40 million licenses in first month

Industry naysaying , a tightened grip on program (or app, if you really want to use that nickname) quality standards, and team lead takeoffs barely budged the churning treads of Microsoft's Windows 8 push, as NDTV reports the operating system sold 40 million licenses in just a single month since releasing on October 26.

Windows business marketing head Tami Reller kept further details in their colorfully boxy cages for now but claimed Windows 8's performance so far exceeded the number of Windows 7 licenses purchased in the same timeframe in 2009. Specific details on the figure's composition between upgrade and new licenses also remained unknown, but Reller considered the former contributing stronger sales.

It's worth underlining that this milestone isn't a count of installed copies of Windows 8, but licenses, which hardware manufacturers purchase in droves for resale through pre-built desktop and laptop setups. Tech research firm StatCounter claimed only around 15 million PC users run Windows 8 so far—a dust-mote 1 percent of the globe's 1.5 billion PCs. A fair bet for the slow adoption is shaky backwards compatibility for older games, but digital distribution services—such as 90 percent of GOG's recently-made- Windows 8-friendly library —thankfully work unhindered.