Hundreds of millions of computers remain on earlier Windows operating systems

Microsoft has sold 40 million Windows 8 licenses since Oct. 26 when the new operating system became available.

That includes all sales, corporate and consumer, although the company provided no breakdown for how many of each there were.

That’s up just about exactly tenfold from the first four days of the operating system’s availability when CEO Steve Ballmer announced the figure at the company’s developers conference.

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Ballmer said back in October that there are 670 million Windows 7 licenses that could be upgraded to Windows 8, plus the expected sale of 400 million new devices that he projects will be sold running Windows 8.

The sales numbers were issued by Tami Reller, corporate vice president and CFO of Windows, at the annual Credit Suisse technology conference Tuesday.

Reller also says the number of applications available for sale in the Windows Store has doubled since the Windows 8 launch from about 10,000 to about 20,000. Apps she highlighted among the new ones included CBS, ABC News, ABC Family, Engadget, Flixster, OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network), Vimeo – none of which is a business productivity app.

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