Microsoft revealed to the tech industry that Windows 8 has surpassed 100 million licenses sold since its launch back in October of 2012; however, that's not the whole story. Apparently, despite the 100 million Windows 8 licenses out in the wild, that doesn't mean 100 million computers are running the new operating system. So how much is it exactly?

While Microsoft is making noise of the 100 million licenses sold, the company has refused to disclose how many computers are running Windows 8. This opens the gates to speculations, and the Guardian appears to have done a pretty good job trying to round up the numbers. These numbers are not 100 percent accurate, but with Windows 8's slow start, they give a good representation of what is truly going on behind closed doors.

Moor Insights & Strategy analyst Patrick Moore came up with a way to find out how many computers are running Windows 8 in the wild.

As he points out, Microsoft does actually know precisely how many machines are actually running Windows 8, because it gets activation data when the PC is first turned on. But for some reason it hasn't shared that number; instead it uses the obfuscatory "licences sold" figure, reported the Guardian.

Well of course, Microsoft refuses to reveal the numbers, and the likely scenario here is that the company is not in any way pleased with the outcome, and is trying to keep investors happy along with making sure of not pre-maturely sending stocks on a downward spiral.

To hone in on a number, Moore used data from Net Applications along with the number of computers running on Windows, which is said to be 1.4 billion.

After Patrick Moore's calculation is done, the final figure came up to 58.6 million. On average, that is less than 10 million Windows 8 devices sold per month, a far cry from Windows 7's 20 million per month when it went on sale. If this number is legitimate, then Microsoft is in some serious hot water, especially when you consider the fact that Windows 8 is not competing admirably in the tablet market either.

It might just be time for Microsoft to get Windows 8.1 out and ready ahead of schedule before it falls behind too much.