14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 10 was officially launched on July 29 and it's rapidly growing in market share data, with new figures revealing that it has already surpassed Windows 8 and is now going after OS X and Windows XP.
Basically, Windows 10 debuted already with a small market share thanks to the Windows Insider program, but since its official launch, the new Microsoft operating system's score has skyrocketed as more users previously running Windows 7 or 8.1 have upgraded their computers.
Right now, Windows 10 is at 3.55 percent, which makes it the fifth most used operating system across the world, according to StatCounter data. Windows 7 continues to be the leader with 53.8 percent, followed by Windows 8.1 with 14.93 percent, and Windows XP with 10.09 percent.
Windows 10 growing stronger
With Windows 10, Microsoft is hoping to avoid another XP moment when support for Windows 7 comes to an end, as currently more than 50 percent of the PCs across the world are still running this particular OS version.
With upgrading users from previous Windows versions now a priority, Microsoft is trying to kill two birds with one stone. First of all, make sure that Windows 7 and 8.1 are dropping their market share and make their demise easier when the time comes, and second of all, boost Windows 10's share as much as possible in order to reach 1 billion devices by 2017.
Redmond has an ambitious goal of bringing Windows 10 on 1 billion devices by 2017, but this also includes mobile phones, so the success of the platform needs to go beyond PCs. Windows 10 Mobile, which is the smartphone version of the new operating system, is projected to launch in just a couple of months, so Microsoft has some 12 months to try achieve its goal.