Windows 8 sales outpace Windows 7's, despite criticism

Despite something of a rough start critically, Microsoft says that sales of Windows 8 licenses are selling faster than Windows 7's did. According to a company blog post, 40 million Windows 8 licenses have sold in just over a month of availability. As Reuters notes, this doesn't mean that 40 million people are actually using Windows 8: that 40 million figure includes license sales to PC manufacturers. Research firm StatCounter says the actual user count is more like 15 million - about 1 percent of the 1.5 billion PC users in the world. Windows 8 has come under fire from game developers for adding a required certification for third-party applications to access certain functions, including its touchscreen interface.