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Windows 10 Now On 400 Million Active Devices, Says Microsoft (thurrott.com)

Posted by msmash on from the dominance dept.

Microsoft announced today that Windows 10 is now running on over 400 million active devices. This is up from 300 million as of May, and 207 million as of end of the March. The company says that it deems devices that have been active in the past 28 days as "active." Microsoft added that this 400 million active devices figure include tablets and phones as well as Xbox One consoles, HoloLens, and Surface Hubs running Windows 10. Paul Thurrott adds:Microsoft last provided a Windows 10 usage milestone on June 29, when it said that there were 350 million active Windows 10 devices. At that time, I noted that the Windows 10 adoption had accelerated from the previous milestone, hitting an average of almost 29 million new devices per month. But 50 million additional devices over three months is a much slower pace of about 17 million per month. This is the slowest rate since Windows 10 was first announced. Again, no surprise there: Windows 10 was free for its first year, and over that time period it averaged roughly 31.25 million new devices per month (if you assume a figure of 375 million after one year, as I do). Does this mean that Windows 10 will see fewer than 20 million new devices each month, on average, going forward? No, of course not. There's no way to accurately gauge how things will go, given that most future devices will be new PCs purchased by businesses or consumers, or business PCs upgraded to Windows 10.

4 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. How many of those... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    willingly?

    1. Re:How many of those... by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Does this count the huge numbers that took the free upgrade, found they didn't like it (or just wanted to lock in the upgrade) and then went back? Does this count units sold to stores but not through to end users?

      This is why I don't buy the numbers put out by companies, there is just too many ways they can manipulate the data to make it look bigger than the actual figures indicate.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    2. Re:How many of those... by Rhipf · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Microsoft is only counting machines that have been turned on (and I assume connected to the Internet) in the last 28 days as active devices. So the number of devices that have Windows 10 installed could be significantly higher than the number stated. If you haven't had your Windows 10 machine on the Internet in the last 28 days it wouldn't have been counted in the 400 million (so all those systems that had Windows 10 installed just to register the machine then returned to a previous version also wouldn't have been counted).

  2. Re:A quick breakdown by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Free Azure virtual machines being handed out like candy to keep customers from Linux might help. There is probably some fine print in there allowing these to be counted.