14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft launched Windows 10 with much fanfare on July 29, promising greatly improved experience from the previous OS versions, including Windows 8, which has more or less become Redmond's second Vista.
In short, Windows 10 was supposed to fix most of the annoyances in Windows 8, so some of the features that are part of the operating system were designed to make it easier to use with a mouse and keyboard, but also on a tablet.
The Start menu, for instance, is brought back in Windows 10, after being removed in Windows 8 and comes with a mode that allows it to be used on all devices running the new operating system, no matter if it has touch or not.
The graph you're seeing here, which we created using market share statistics provided by StatCounter, compares Windows 10's first 10 days on the market with Windows 8's, and at first glance, it's pretty clear that the new OS version is already much more successful.
Four times bigger share after 10 days
Windows 10 started its adventure in the OS battle with a 0.58 percent market share on day 1, while Windows 8 was running on only 0.39 percent of the PCs when it launched in October 2012.
This makes it obvious that the Windows Insider program proved to be a successful testing effort, upgrading a number of PCs to Windows 10 even before its launch.
The next day, Windows 10 almost tripled its share to 1.34 percent, while Windows 8 improved only slightly to 0.48 percent.
The highest market share achieved by Windows 8 in the first 10 days on the market was 0.77 percent, while Windows 10 adoption skyrocketed and reached 4.13 percent on Day 10.
Obviously, Windows 10's adoption figures are expected to grow significantly in the coming weeks, while Windows 8's should go down even more.
So right now, it appears that Microsoft finally played the winning card with Windows 10, but it will be interesting to see how it compares to Windows 7, which is still the preferred OS for more than half of PC users across the world.