Microsoft: Ballmer statements on Windows 8 sales were misquoted

[nsane.forums]

Microsoft has now sent out a statement claiming that statements made by its CEO Steve Ballmer this week about the projected sales of Windows 8 were in fact misquoted by the original source.

Earlier this week, we reported that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said during a speech in South Korea that up to 500 million users will be using a Windows 8 device by the end of 2013. The statement was first reported by the AFP news service. The news story spread like wildwire on the Internet and certainly generated a lot of comments on our site, mostly saying that Ballmer's predictions were way too optimistic

Now Microsoft is doing a bit of damage control. Computerworld.com reports that in a statement, Microsoft claims that Ballmer was misquoted in that AFP report. It says:

The numbers Steve Ballmer gave at the Seoul event are a restatement of what we said at the Windows 8 Store event in December, when we were talking about existing Windows users and analyst projections of PC sales for 2012 that could be upgraded to Windows 8 when the time comes.

The "restatement" refers to one made by Ted Dworkin, director of the Windows Store development team in December. At the time Dworkin said in a Microsoft blog post:

We've just passed the 500 million licenses sold mark for Windows 7, which represents half a billion PCs that could be upgraded to Windows 8 on the day it ships. That represents the single biggest platform opportunity available to developers.

So there's your explanation, according to Microsoft.

View: Original Article

[DKT27]

They expect all the Windows 7 users to upgrade to Windows 8?

[Ganxxta]

Well they also expected that nobody would buy a over 500$ iPhone... :D