Steve Ballmer says Microsoft has sold 4 million copies of Windows 8 in 3 days.
That’s 4 million in 3 days. Solid, right? Sure. Though it has to be noted that Apple sold 3 million copies of OS X Mountain Lion in 4 days. Microsoft likes to poke fun at the small OS X install base, and now it works both ways. Apple got nearly as many people to buy the update for OS X in the same amount of time despite a sliver of the overall footprint.
Daring Fireball's Jon Gruber seemed to second this view, using the same block quote above and linking to Siegler's post.
Here's the problem, though.
3 million in 4 days is not "nearly as many" as 4 million in 3 days.
It's actually a significant amount fewer.
4 million in 3 days is 1.33 million sold per day. 3 million in four days is 750,000 per day.
750,000 is about 56% of 1.33 million.
None of this is to say Apple isn't an extremely successful company with massive sales. And Siegler has a good point about Apple's OS sales being impressive relative to the OS's smaller footprint.
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