Stats reveal six times more downloads on Windows 10

Aug 27, 2015 05:42 GMT  ·  By

The Windows Store was significantly revamped in Windows 10 to bring together PCs and phones, and become the home of universal apps, music, TV shows and movies, and Microsoft says that this strategy is already paying off.

Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President of Marketing for Windows and Devices, has revealed today that Windows Store for Windows 10 has seen 6 times more app downloads per device than Windows 8, suggesting that users are more interested in universal apps than they were in Metro apps when the previous OS version came out.

Specific statistics have not been provided, but it's no wonder that this is happening. Microsoft has talked about universal apps on every single occasion, as they're a critical part of the company's unified store and Windows 10 OS.

Universal apps are designed to work on all Windows 10 devices, be they PCs, tablets, or smartphones, sharing most of their code, so no changes are needed to be launched on one device or another.

Windows 8 store stats

The last time Microsoft shared information on Windows 8 store downloads was in April 2015, when it revealed that Games was the most successful category, along with Tools & Productivity, Music & Videos, and Social. Games is likely to be number one in Windows 10 too.

“Since we began posting these trend updates, we’ve seen categories and rankings become fairly stable. The main exception has been the Games category for Windows, which continues to grow and now accounts for over 45% of Windows downloads,” Microsoft revealed in April.

The Windows Store was most successful in the United States and China, but the latter country doesn't seem to be as interested in Windows 10 as fellow Americans are, so figures might be different this time.

English was obviously the top language, and this is unlikely to change for Windows 10, while low-memory devices accounted for nearly 70 percent of the downloads.