Windows 10 Grabs 5.21% Market Share, Passing Windows Vista and Windows 8

An anonymous reader writes: The effects of a free upgrade to Windows 10 are starting to trickle in. Available for just over a month, Windows 10 has now captured more than 5 percent market share, according to the latest figures from Net Applications. In just four weeks, Windows 10 has already been installed on over 75 million PCs. Microsoft is aiming to have 1 billion devices running Windows 10 "in two to three years," though that includes not just PCs, but smartphones, consoles, and other devices as well.

Comments

To be expected

[Dunbal]

They're giving it away free and they pushed a little "install me" button on current Win 7 and Win 8 installs. I'm actually surprised it's not higher. This 5% should be seen as a failure not a success.

Re:To be expected

[MyAlternateID]

I really hope that this is not the end of Windows as a basic, functional, user friendly operating system. It was never a perfect OS, but Windows 7 got many things right. Windows 10 got many, many things wrong.

I sure hope it is the end of Windows as "THE" desktop OS in the minds of so many users. Ideally we'd have at least four or five operating systems in common use with roughly similar market shares and a strong emphasis on cross-platform compatibility for application developers so that jumping ship is as easy as possible. This would also provide a disincentive against all of the phoning-home behavior and other unwanted "features" increasingly common with Windows installations. It would also make malware propagation more difficult because the Windows monoculture just makes it too easy.

Re:To be expected

[0123456]

Out in the real world, most people don't play games. They're more likely to be tied to Windows by tax software and the like.

Re:Only because it is free.

[Barlo_Mung_42]

That's not the whole story. Lots of OSs are free but don't have 5% market share. It helps that Win10 is a really good OS and is getting solid reviews.

What I read:

[ledow]

"Windows 2015 Grabs 5.21% Market Share, Passing Windows 2006 and Windows 2012 - majority of people still on Windows 2009 or maybe even Windows 2001".

Er... that's just NOT GOOD. I understand it's early days but for a FREE (in fact, in-your-fucking-face-you-will-have-this-whether-you-like-it-or-not) upgrade, that's just worrying. And nowadays volume licensing offer software assurance, and all kinds of things that make it as cheap to upgrade as to stay where you were.

And, still, it only just beats a 9 and 3 year old operating system and is DWARVED by a 6 year old operating system? It really suggests - as most of us know - that this isn't a forward step at all.

Yeah, early days, but testing etc. versions have been available for over a year. So far, our finance, banking, database and even interactive whiteboard software suppliers have notified us that we're just not supported on the new OS. We haven't even TRIED it properly, and people are already telling us we can't upgrade anyway (why they left it this late to announce that, that's another question entirely).

I work for schools and we're on SA, so we can get Windows 10 for the same price no matter what. I can't find a convincing reason to test it, going purely on what's in our email inbox, when developers have been able to test for a year now. I booted it up in a VM and tested Classic Shell still worked, that was about it.

I've had three members of staff ask me about Windows 10. The first, it broke their software. The second it was a new machine but our software wouldn't install because of the above incompatibilities (I chanced it to shut them up, but it just wouldn't go anyway). The third, it lost all their data (possible user-error but we'll never know now).

The only thing I've done about Windows 10 is block all the updates via WSUS that try to get our users to install it by popups and notifications masquerading as security updates.

So what

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I don't give a damn if it grabbed 50% of whatever bullshit metric they claim to be measuring. Win 7 works for me and I'll probably use it until I'm literally forced to upgrade (i.e. lack of drivers, etc).

And then I'll switch to Linux.

Re:Only because it is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

He isn't smoking anything. That's the M$ payoff speaking. The same type of payoff that created, I mean bought, all of the positive media reviews of Win10.