Since its launch last October, Microsoft has sold more than 100 million licenses for Windows 8, despite its perceived slow adoption by industry analysts.

Windows 8 was aimed at increasing Microsoft’s penetration into the fast-growing mobile segment by radically modifying the desktop to cater for touch screen devices. Users lamented the demise of the “Start” button and Microsoft will be resurrecting this functionality (as previously mentioned here) with the advent of Windows 8.1 on October 18.

It will be offered as a free download to existing Windows 8 users and as a full retail version in its own right.

Microsoft states that Windows 8.1 will bring many improvements in areas such as:

• Personalisation;
• Internet Explorer 11;
• Bing-powered search;
• Built-in apps including a few new ones;
• Improved Windows Store experience; and
• Cloud connectivity with SkyDrive.

For those interested in learning more, Windows 8.1 has been available for public preview since June 26. A word of warning though: if you don’t have recovery media, we recommend that you create a USB recovery drive before you install Windows 8.1 Preview so that you can go revert if you need to.