10/20/2015

Windows 10 Hits 110 Million Devices

Two months into Windows 10's run and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) finds itself a tenth of the way to reaching its three year goal.
Windows 10 hand on keyboards

Microsoft has its sights set on a billion active Windows 10 installations in the wild by mid-2018.  At its press event today, it announced that there were now 110 million active copies of Windows 10 in the wild.  As some pointed out to me last time, remember this figure includes installs both on devices and virtual machine installs (although my guess is that VM installs represent 1-2 million at most of the total, if that).

The new mark is up roughly 45 million from the numbers released from Microsoft on Aug. 26, six weeks ago.  That works out to roughly 7.5 million new installs (or sales of Windows 10 PCs) per week.

That's good, but not great, for a couple of reasons.  First, those numbers fall under the tail end of the so-called "back to school shopping season" (Aug.-Sept.), a time that has traditionally been one of the strongest seasonal sales periods for the PC.  Second, it's off the pace of early adoption, which equated to nearly 18 million new additions per week.

Windows 10 -- log scale

Windows 10 decimal scale
Installs -- in log and decimal scales [Image Source: Jason Mick/DailyTech LLC]

Still, the numbers aren't looking bad and even growing at a third the pace a couple months post-launch isn't a bad outcome for Microsoft from a historical perspective.

The caveat, of course, is that Windows 10 upgrades are free, so one might expect even higher numbers and even faster adoption, if all was honky-dory.  All is not, however, as Windows 10 has suffered from some serious early hiccups -- most notably some serious drivers issues and some memory leaks.



Still, in spite of these problems the pace of adoption has been decent, and the general public sentiment towards the new operating system is much more favorable with Windows 10, than it was with Windows Vista, an OS that suffered similar technical hiccups.

This is arguably, in part because of Google Inc.'s (GOOG) and Apple, Inc.'s (AAPLrecent design language decisionswhich have largely followed in Microsoft's line in terms of adopting a flattermore minimalist look.  While some may hate that style direction, it's hard to view Microsoft as anything but a leader in what is trending -- for better or worse.

Windows 10 -- towards goal

The install/adoption rate will inevitably drop off further as the holiday shopping season wraps, up, but based on what Microsoft has shown so far, it's well on its way to hitting its modest three-year mark.

Microsoft also announced that the Windows 10 Store, Microsoft's software sales hub, has seen 1.25+ billion visits.  That works out to 11+ visits per installed copy of Windows 10, which isn't bad given the number of different sources users have for Windows software.

- See more at: http://www.dailytech.com/Quick+Note+Windows+10+Hits+110+Million+Devices+VMs/article37500.htm#sthash.onqRnPFN.dpuf

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