Microsoft Isn't Yet Ready to Discuss Windows 8, Surface Sales

With so much riding on the success of Windows 8 -- both for Microsoft and the PC industry as a whole, the latter of which is in a slump of sorts -- it'd be interesting to know how many copies of the touch friendly operating system (OS) the Redmond company was able to move since launching to the general public four days ago. Unfortunately, Steve Ballmer is keeping sales figures of both Windows 8 and Surface RT close to the chest, at least until the numbers are a bit more "interesting."

"Numerically there's not really much that's interesting to report," Ballmer told The Wall Street Journal in a recent interview. "If you were to call the retailers, they would say, 'Hey, off to a very good start.' We're out of stock a lot of places on touch machines."


For the sake of comparison, when Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) was released, Apple announced that it roared to 3 million downloads in the first four days. We won't know how Windows 8 compares until Microsoft deems the numbers interesting enough to report.

Ballmer touched on a number of other topics during the interview, such as the fact that Microsoft appears content for the time being to collaborate with Nokia on Windows Phone 8 devices rather than offer its own branded smartphone.