Big growth experienced by Windows 10 last month

Dec 4, 2017 10:25 GMT  ·  By

The release of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update seems to help Microsoft’s latest desktop operating system, with statistics provided by NetMarketShare revealing a major share increase recorded in November.

The growth of Windows 10 has slowed down in the last 12 months or so, mostly because the majority of Windows 7 and 8.1 customers who were eligible for the upgrade to the new OS already performed the switch, but now it looks like the growth has gained more speed as a result of the Fall Creators Update launch.

Windows 10 was running on 31.95 percent of the desktop systems in November, NetMarketShare says, while Windows 7 continues to be the leader with 43.12 percent. While Windows 7 itself improved from 43.05 percent the month before, Windows 10 was the one gaining all the praises, as its market share skyrocketed from 29.86 percent in November.

This means that Windows 10 is getting closer to its 2009 sibling, though it’ll undoubtedly take longer than expected before a switch of positions takes place.

Windows 7 EOL

And while sooner or later Windows 10 will manage to take over Windows 7 and become the world’s number one desktop operating system, Microsoft certainly hopes this will happen as soon as possible because of one big reason.

Windows 7 will reach end of support in January 2020, which means that no other updates and security fixes would be released beyond this date.

Judging from what happened with Windows XP when the 2001 operating system was pulled and more than 20 percent of the world’s PCs were running it, Microsoft needs to pave the way for Windows 7’s end a lot earlier. Moving systems to Windows 10 could thus be a double win for Microsoft, especially because it has a goal of bringing 1 billion devices on its latest OS as soon as possible.

Originally, the software giant planned to do this by the end of FY2017, but the company said earlier this year that this target is unlikely to be met.