14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has recently revealed that Windows 10 is running on 400 million devices across the world, including here PCs, tablets, laptops, smartphones, and Xbox consoles.
These new numbers show only a small growth over the 300 million figure announced on May 5, so Windows 10 improved by approximately 100 million active devices in about 5 months. Previously, Microsoft said that Windows 10 was installed on 207 million devices at the end of March.
The free upgrade offer for Windows 7 and 8.1 users ended on July 29, and it’s believed that this is one of the main reasons why Windows 10 experienced a slowdown in worldwide adoption. Right now, consumers who didn’t perform the upgrade before July 29 need to pay for the new operating system, with pricing starting at $119.99 for the Home SKU in the United States.
The post-free upgrade slowdown
Before the end of the free upgrade campaign, approximately 30 million new devices installed Windows 10 every month, but shortly after the promo was discontinued, the growth slowed down to 16.6 million devices per month.
Despite the obvious slowdown, Microsoft claims that Windows 10 is more widely adopted than Windows 7, but the company admits that it’s going to miss the FY2018 target of 1 billion devices running the new operating system.
Third-party market share statistics have shown that Windows 7 continues to be the number one operating system on the desktop with a share that’s close to 45 percent (numbers could vary depending on research firm), while Windows 10 is already the runner-up with a share that’s above 20 percent.
Microsoft, however, expects Windows 10’s growth to experience a new boost by the end of the year, as enterprises are likely to finalize the piloting stage of the new operating system and begin deployment for company PCs. And yet, it’s now very clear that Microsoft will miss the 1 billion devices target for Windows 10, but it remains to be seen when exactly this milestone is going to be reached.