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One Year Later: Windows 10 Now Runs On Over 21% of All Desktops (winbeta.org)
An anonymous reader writes: On June 29, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 was running on 350 million devices -- 50 million more devices than the previous milestone announced by Microsoft on May 5. While the company is expected to update the number of devices running the latest OS when it releases the Windows 10 Anniversary Update on August 2nd, NetMarketShare has decided to conduct some research on its own. According to its report, Windows 10 currently runs on a 21.13% desktop OS share. Meanwhile, Windows 7 continues to dominate the market with a 47.01% share, with Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 representing less than 10% of the PC market, and Windows XP representing 10.34%. While the market share of Windows 10 is all but certain to rise, it likely won't rise as fast as it did between May and June or June and July for example, as Windows 10 is no longer offered as a free upgrade for PCs running Windows 7 or Windows 8. Microsoft has even backtracked on its original statement that Windows 10 will hit one billion devices by mid-2018, saying last month that Windows 10 likely won't in fact make that deadline.
run it unwillingly.
The data over at Stat Counter seems to agree:
http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-os-ww-monthly-201506-201606
Looks like MacOS and Linux share has remained roughly flat over the last year. Win8.1 use has declined 48.5% and Win7 by 23.1%. Hence Win10's adoption has been at the expense of Win8.1 and to a lesser extent Win7. Overall it seems Microsoft's free upgrade has largely been successful at retaining existing Windows users, but it hasn't won any converts from Apple, and it hasn't slowed down Android at all. They stopped the bleeding, but its not exactly the "threshold" that would return Windows to growth that Microsoft's upper management claimed it would be.
"...Windows 10 is no longer offered as a free upgrade for PCs running Windows 7 or Windows 8."
I think what the author meant to say was, "Windows 10 is no longer rammed down the throat any user too naive to treat anything coming from Microsoft as a malware attack."
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
if i recall correctly, october is when microsoft will quit allowing factory downgrade options from major oems like toshiba, hp, dell, lenovo. the customer, or even you as a var, can still do it yourself as permitted by the oem/dsp eula, but the systems will have to ship from the manufacturer with win 10 pro installed. i know at dell it's already slim-pickings for downgrades to 8.1 or 7 pro.
Wake me up when it's finished and usable instead of a total mess with two control panels and a requirement to search instead of navigate a menu.
"4/5ths of people refused a free upgrade to what was traditionally a very expensive piece of software, despite us trying to forcibly install it on their machines for months on end and making it difficult for anyone other than a techy to refuse it".
Amazing how you can change how something reads by just flipping it.
Windows 10 probably will be the last version of Windows, but not the way Microsoft imagines it.
By continuing to nag, snoop, spam and lock-down its users, Microsoft is transforming its core offering - its OS - into the opposite of what it should be: an agent of the owner that compels the computer to obey the owner's intent.
Its the age-old agency problem. An agent with a large amount of power (network effects in Microsoft's case) tends to abuse it to the detriment of the principal (Microsoft users). Its same problem when powerful executives persuade their company to reward them richly without commensurate effort. Left uncorrected, the situation worsens (customers quit in disgust, company implodes, etc).
Another company may eventually do to the Microsoft desktop what Apple and Android did to them in mobile. Or Microsoft may wisen up and curb their worst excesses (as they did in the XBox One phone-home fiasco). But it'd be a hard sell to the MS board and would take a lot of imagination on their part to act more directly in favor of consumers, versus short-term shareholder rewards.
Not even the tactics that MS used to push Windows 10 as an updates to earlier versions allowed them to beat Windows 7. Giving Windows 10 away was not enough to convince Windows 7 users to upgrade. This shows the OS is already a failure.
Many Windows users really did not like the user interface choices that MS made in Windows 8 and stuck with their preferred interface. Although Windows 10 rolled back some of those mistakes, it created many more to replace them and annoyed users by being sneaky about upgrades. MS has annoyed their customers with recent versions of Windows by no giving customers what they want or trying to turn customers into the product.
I am one of those that is sticking with Windows 7 and we never install the spyware/adware version of Windows that 10 has proven to be. I have already largely to moved to Linux so it will not be any great loss.
A new MS operating system "offering" a free upgrade from its predecessors, so every single user of a previous OS pretty much had to go out of their way to NOT get it, reaches 20% penetration (and I chose that word deliberately, for the way it tried to "convince" you to install it) after a year.
That is pretty much a declaration of bankruptcy.
The amount of "computer savvy" people isn't that high to warrant this number. It's not just "paranoid geeks" that saw the wiring under the board and didn't want to be infected. This number pretty much means that four out of five people using Win7 or Win8.1 fought tooth and nail to NOT upgrade.
And four out of five people aren't paranoid computer geeks. These are "normal" computer users. My hope is that this is the beginning of people getting a clue about their privacy being at stake.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's called Windows Embedded POSReady 2009.
I would like to add that, contrary to frequent rumors, the "POS" in there doesn't actually stand for Piece of Shit. It actually means... uhh... well I'm sure it's not meant to be Piece of Shit.
"Oh no! I've been upgraded to Windows 10 when I wanted to stay on Windows 7. I'm confused how to use my computer now and maybe some of my software won't work! I know, the solution to my dilemma is to request a switch to a totally different OS that has even less in common with the Windows 7 I wanted to remain on, and most of my software is certain to not work."
Yeah. That totally happened.
I can't administrate Windows 10 anymore. I have to install Linux on people's computers now.
This isn't like Mac, where things are named differently, or put in different places. At least there you still get a dialog box, or set of drop downs or radio buttons or whatever and can still fiddle with things. Even on Mac, the computer has settings, things are somewhere and you can figure out what to do eventually.
Windows 10 is becoming unconfigurable. There are now two control panels. The usual control panel, which increasingly has a lot of stuff taken out, and a Metro/charm based "Settings" panel which works like the worst, most uninteractive mobile app interface you have ever encountered. I went into Windows Update (moved entirely to what I will call "Charm") to try and turn off various updates. In effect, there was nothing to click on. Hyperlinked text did nothing, there were not radio buttons, dropdown lists, checkboxes, nothing. There was bullet pointed text that did....nothing. Most other charm settings were the same. I had never felt so frustrated with a computer since I ditched my Tablet.
I googled online for help with my problem and after the 8th dubious Q&A website with poorly formatted helpdesk checklists instructions, nearly always involving reboots, some unbelieveably obscure KB3839272618192 update, usually for another the version of Windows, and nearly always answered by someone with an Indian avatar for some reason. Nothing worked. I could not find out how to get things to work. Not even registry keys could be changed since I didn't have super-duper-permission and could not figure out how to get them in any reasonable way.
After 3 hours, I came to the conclusion that after 25 years of Windows experience, from DOS and 2.0, to 3.11, to Win 95, 98se, NT and 2000, XP, and 7, .... I can't use Windows anymore. Not Windows 8/10 anyway. All my experience and knowledge is basically useless for this new Operating system. It's as if MS was taken over by some dubious Portland startup with grand plans for an operating system and no idea who Windows users actually are, or what Windows is used for.
I can't do this anymore, so I'm not going to. I've moved several computer novices to linux in the last few years and they did just fine with a browser and email client, and the ability to play movies etc. There's the odd hiccup of course, but for Gods' sake a lot of the people can't even use Windows anymore. Windows. They can't use it; I can't fix it; we're done with it. I suspect this is happening in slow motion all over.
I predict MSFT will be in deep trouble in three years time, when the scale of this slow motion train wreck becomes too big to ignore.
how are they managing that, MS no longer license win 7 Pro!
That is wrong. It is even mentioned in the f..ing article that Windows 7 Pro is available to OEMs until October 31, 2016.
I'm wondering whether this will actually happen. Every business supplier we work with still assumes 7 by default for work machines, and that makes sense because almost everyone I know in business still wants 7. If MS try to strong-arm the likes of Dell and HP into not selling what their customers actually want, I don't know who's going to win, but sign me up for a ring-side seat.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
If you think that's not a speed demon, you have more money than common sense. My first-gen i5 with 8GB is "fairly modern". Hell, even a Core 2 Duo with 4GB is a solid general use machine (except for new games).
Circumcision is child abuse.