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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.

15 of 153 comments (clear)

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

    willingly?

    1. Re:How many of those... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Word on the street is that the majority of devices running it have become inactive so the numbers may be much better for Microsoft.

    2. 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.

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    3. Re:How many of those... by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 5, Informative

      Here is a different take on the story:
      http://www.computerworld.com/article/3032976/microsoft-windows/there-s-something-fishy-about-those-windows-10-market-share-numbers.html

      --
      You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
    4. Re:How many of those... by gweilo8888 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Exactly. Speaking personally, of the four machines (three laptop, one desktop) in my house that were eligible for the upgrade, only one has been upgraded, and that solely as a hedge against needing to use a Win10-specific app in the future. That machine has only even been booted three times in the last year, and is switched off 99%+ of the time. The upgrade was intentionally blocked by me on every other machine in my household. I don't doubt for a second that Microsoft is counting me as a success in its reporting, however, even if it claims not to be. They've simply been caught lying, cheating and trying to screw over their own customers too many times to think otherwise.

    5. 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. A quick breakdown by ausekilis · · Score: 2

    6 million Surface tablets, ~20 million XBox Ones, ~20 million Windows Phones (I thought that would be more like 20 total). That means a majority is desktop/laptop sales and "free upgrades".

    The strange part is the 200 million in 6 months. I'm not entirely sure how that was done, nor do i have the time to really dig into it. Maybe ATM's and POS registers have been upgraded?

    1. 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.

  3. Clippy says... by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 3, Funny

    Somewhere in an Italian restaurant, Clippy smiles at the 400M copies of Cortana and thinks "revenge is a dish best served cold."

  4. Just rename windows 8 ... by Maxwell · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So they are calling the Xbox version of "Windows 10" the same as the phone version of "Windows 10" the same as the Surface RT version of "Windows 10"? Even though they have different interfaces, requirements, CPU's etc? Why not just rename Windows 8 and Windows 7 to " Windows 10"? They could leap another 100M+ devices that way. The delta between 8.1 and 10 can't be any great than that between Mobile and xboxone, right? rename hotmail to "Windows 10" to, pick up another 100M users there. They can hit a Billion quickly if they just rebrand everything "Window 10". It's been done before. MSN, Live, Windows10.

  5. Re:And how many by Kjella · · Score: 3, Informative

    And how many are still running Win 7

    Well as of last week StatCounter puts Win7 at 39.46% and Win10 at 24.33% of the desktop OS market share, of course that's not all devices running Win10. But a whole lot and after the free offer ended there's not been much migration at all. I suspect Win7 will be even harder to kill than WinXP and that wasn't easy.

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  6. Seriously, *only* 400 million? by QuietLagoon · · Score: 2

    ...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:...

    After a year of lambasting users to upgrade, at times trying to trick and mislead users into upgrading, 400 million devices, which includes tablets and phones as well as Xbox One consoles, is all that Windows 10 has garnered so far?

    .
    Instead of issuing a press release, Microsoft should be hanging its head in shame.

  7. Re:And how many by tgrigsby · · Score: 2

    I've got Win7 on my main desktop machine and on a number of VMs, and there is no way in hell I'm upgrading them. Especially since the latest Windows automatic update killed my laptop over the weekend and I had to get MSI's tech support involved to get it running again (thanks guys!). Microsoft can upgrade all my machines when it can pry Win7 from my cold dead hands... bastards...

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    *** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
  8. Reading it wrong by tgrigsby · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You guys are reading this wrong. This isn't a, "Wow, Windows 10 is so cool," article, this is a, "Wow, Microsoft has managed to force more people to upgrade faster than they did going from XP to Windows 7." And in that regard, yes, Microsoft has mastered that one aspect of the game much better than they did in the past.

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    *** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
  9. Re:Still off Windows 10 by Black+Parrot · · Score: 3, Funny

    Thank god! (and I'm not even religious!)

    Everyone is religious when it comes to operating systems.

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