Without even clicking the link, my guess is that it is because of creative ways of saying what it means to have "sold" a license. Clearly, Windows 8 has fewer t

Without even clicking the link, my guess is that it is because of creative ways of saying what it means to have "sold" a license. Clearly, Windows 8 has fewer than 60 million users. ..yes, that's probably true. clicking the link you'd see that they are pretty clear in that the 60 million licenses number is just that, licenses they've sold (consumer upgrades + oem installs). wouldn't really call it creative as, financially, this makes perfect sense from their perspective -- in that they record revenue at the point of sale (with the majority of sales to OEMs). as far as I know this is also consistent with how they've always reported sales, making the numbers comparable with previous launches. I don't know too much about the dynamics of the industry but I'm guessing activations likely lag licenses sold by a month or so..