In addition to reporting that Microsoft sold 40 million Windows 8 licenses in a month, Tami Reller, Microsoft's chief marketing officer and chief financial officer for Windows Division, said that 85-percent of the new Windows 8 users chose to use the familiar desktop on the first day rather than depend on the Modern UI overlay. But she also added that most of these users have discovered the advantages of using the new interface over the course of three weeks.
According to Computerworld, her statistics derive through remote telemetry. Microsoft has reportedly logged over 1.5 billion impressions of Windows 8 customers deploying the new Start screen. She said that not only has it become home base for most users, but they're personalizing it, adding an average of 19 additional tiles to the set that already comes installed on the new UI system.
"When people experience Windows 8, they do find it is easy to get started and fun to learn," she said on Tuesday at the Credit Suisse Annual Technology Conference, in Scottsdale, Arizona. "We know from the data we're getting in that customers do indeed get the product."
Other statistics include the use of Charms, as 90-percent of the Windows 8 customers use these two or three times a session to find, search, explore and share. The number of Windows Store apps has also reportedly doubled since the platform launched in October, and several of those apps have even been downloaded more than a million times. She said 25-percent of the new Windows 8 users have actually added 30 new live tiles.
Reller also cautioned skeptics that Windows 8 can't be compared to Windows 7 in regards to the adoption rate. She said the older OS wasn't addressing a major change in the underlying hardware platform – meaning Windows 7 didn't have to deal with the tablet form factor. Thus Windows 8 is taking on a bigger role by embracing not only the typical x86-based platform, but the touchy tablet form factor as well.
"This has been the biggest project since Windows 95," she said.
