[forgotAgain]

If Microsoft wanted to impart real knowledge in pronouncements such as this they would have clarity in what they say. By not giving a definition of what they mean by "licenses sold" they are avoiding clarity. It's an example of why many people, including myself, have lost confidence in everything they say.

[kenjackson]

Licenses sold is pretty clear. What else would you like them to say? This is the figure they've always given. It would seem odd to me if they created some new metric that we couldn't compare with Win7 and Vista sales.

[forgotAgain]

What else would you like them to say?

How many licenses are sitting with OEMs? If retails sales are below expectations the channel may have over purchased and items are sitting on the shelf.

How many sales are through enterprise agreements? These sales may be a bundle of licenses for different products. It is not unusual industry practice to throw in, for next to nothing, products that for strategic reasons, need to have sales numbers inflated. Or the enterprises may have purchased the license because they are contractually obligated to buy the latest desktop OS version.

It would seem odd to me if they created some new metric that we couldn't compare with Win7 and Vista sales.

Since what they mean has never been defined there is no metric. They could quite easily have changed what's being measured and no one would be the wiser.

[zik]

Since the vast majority of these licenses are sold to OEMs to build systems it doesn't reflect anything much. The number sold to actual customers would be a lot more useful.

[kenjackson]

What do you mean? Are you talking about the amount sold directly to consumers or the amount that get into consumers hands?

The former is uninteresting. The latter would be great, but MS doesn't know this info (and they've never reported it).

And the channel I suspect is pretty efficient when it comes to license acquisition, since you don't need to do runs like you do in HW.