Slowly moving towards a milestone Microsoft during a Q&A section revealed that it sold more than 100 million Windows 8 licenses. This number includes Windows licenses that shipped with a brand new tablet or PC, as well as all upgrades to Windows 8 from earlier versions.
During January, Microsoft reported 60 million Windows license sale, so within three months Microsoft has made a good progress with its new Windows that have grabbed mixed reviews. Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Financial Officer Tami Reller reveled that there will be an update incoming codename ‘Windows Blue‘ which will be rolling out later this year.
“It will deliver the latest new innovations across an increasingly broad array of form factors of all sizes, display, battery life and performance, while creating new opportunities for our ecosystem. It will provide more options for businesses, and give consumers more options for work and play. The Windows Blue update is also an opportunity for us to respond to the customer feedback that we’ve been closely listening to since the launch of Windows 8 and Windows RT. From a company-wide perspective, Windows Blue is part of a broader effort to advance our devices and services for Microsoft.” says Tami Reller.
SkyDrive touches 250 million users
Since October 2012 after Windows 8 launched, 50 million more people signed up to use Microsoft’s cloud service SkyDrive, helping them to touch a new milestone of over 250 million users using the service.
Microsoft is improving the cloud service in every way to compete with the likes of Google and Dropbox. During recent updates SkyDrive got improved security with two-step verification and Extended Validation Certificates integrated on SkyDrive.com. There has been substantial performance improvements to SkyDrive uploading and in addition updates on SkyDrive app for iOS and Android. Microsoft is now fully integrating SkyDrive with Outlook allowing users to insert anything from your SkyDrive directly into an email message.
Hotmail Migration – Outlook reached 400 million active accounts
With the recent migration of all Hotmail customers to Outlook.com, Microsoft’s new email service touches a new milestone of over 400 million active accounts which includes 125 million users accessing email, calendar and contacts on a mobile device using Exchange ActiveSync. Microsoft made a bold move by migrating its 300 million active Hotmail account to Outlook.com. That’s more than 150 million gigabytes of data migration and ensuring every person’s mail, calendar, contacts, folders, and personal preferences were preserved in the upgrade.
With this milestone Microsoft has also announced two new features for Outlook.com – SMTP send support making it easier to send mail from different email addresses, and deeper integration with SkyDrive.