Microsoft sells 60m Windows 8 licenses

Microsoft claims to have sold 60 million licenses of its new Windows 8 operating system to date, a cumulative figure that includes both upgrades and sales to original equipment manufacturers for new devices.

Microsoft communications manager Brandon LeBlanc claims it was "a similar sales trajectory [to what] we saw with Windows 7." 

LeBlanc also said that over 1,700 systems have been certified for Windows 8 and RT.

The number of licenses sold was announced by Microsoft chief marketing and financial officer, Tami Reller, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier today.

Reller did not break down the proportion of OEM licenses and upgrades however.

Despite the apparent success of Windows 8, several large Microsoft OEM partners including Fujitsu and Acer have had to revise their PC sales figures substantially downwards. The OEMs say this is due to weak consumer demand for the new operating system.

Microsoft also announced that it has reached a milestone of 100 million apps downloaded on Windows Store - two months after it became available to the general public. 

Apple previously announced that its App Store has seen over 40 billion apps since 2008, with 20 billion last year.

Over two billion App Store apps were downloaded in December 2012 alone. The App Store now has over 775,000 apps for iOS and is available in 155 countries, according to Apple.