Windows 8 Consumer Preview Reaches One Million Downloads in a Day
Microsoft has just announced that its consumer preview version of Windows 8 has been downloaded one million times in just 24 hours.
"One day later… one million downloads of the consumer preview," wrote the Building Windows 8 team on its Twitter page.
Microsoft launched a test version of the long anticipated Windows 8 software on Wednesday during this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Microsoft reportedly made over 100,000 code changes to the operating system since the original developer preview was launching last September, according to Steven Sinosky, the head of the company's Windows division.
Windows 8 is expected to officially launch sometime in the later part of 2012. The software, that also supports ARM processors will be used to established Microsoft's place in the rapidly growing tablet market currently dominated by the company's rival, Apple.
The operating system is specifically designed to work on touch screen devices such as tablets. Microsoft hopes to integrate the PC, tablet and smartphone experience more efficiently.
The release of Windows 8 is vital to Microsoft's lifespan and will determine whether or not the software giant can hack it in the "tablet-smartphone era."
The company recently made a decision to lower the specifications on smartphones running its Windows Phone software in order to make the devices more affordable in comparison to the competition such as Apple and Android who normally release high end devices with state of the art hardware.
One example of this would be the newly unveiled Nokia Lumia 610 that features a 5-megapixel rear camera, 3.7-inch display, a 1300mAh battery and 256MB of RAM.
The Lumia 610 is also the first device to feature Windows Phone 7 also known as Windows Mango.
Most of the newer high-end smartphones include 8-megapixel rear cameras, 1GB of RAM and displays that exceed 4-inches in terms of size.
