Roger Fingas
Adoption of Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system has already hit 75 million devices nearing the end of its first month, a marketing executive announced on Wednesday.
The OS has been installed on over 90,000 unique PC and tablet models, some dating back to 2007, said Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's VP of marketing for Windows and devices. He noted that the company has also seen six times more Windows Store app downloads per device than with Windows 8.
Aided by being a free upgrade for many Windows users, the pace of Windows 10 adoption has been much faster than Windows 7 or 8. Windows 8 saw sales of approximately 40 million licenses in its first month, while Windows 7 took two months to hit 60 million.
As Windows remains the most popular desktop and laptop OS — representing over 90 percent of July online traffic monitored by NetMarketShare — even 75 million is a relatively small percentage of Microsoft's userbase. Research firm Gartner estimated that the combined PC industry shipped 68.4 million computers in the June quarter alone, of which less than 4.8 million were Macs, the only other major computing platform.
OS X Yosemite, a free update for owners of Mavericks, managed to reach about 12.8 percent of Mac users within its first week. Roughly three and a half months later, that figure rose to 49 percent.
Microsoft will need to maintain rapid adoption to meet its goal of having Windows 10 on a billion devices within three years. The company should be helped by a variety of factors, including free upgrades for the first year, PCs shipping with the software pre-installed, and it being a universal OS adaptable to tablets and phones.
AppleInsider Staff
Malcolm Owen
Oliver Haslam
Andrew O'Hara
Wesley Hilliard
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
84 Comments
Yeah I put it on my work computer and had booting issues. After installing the first Windows Update sent out the machine would not boot at all. Fortunately the roll back to Windows 7 was easy and sucessful. Since I have a 3 year old Dell Insperon, maybe I expect too much. /s
lol, botnet.
I’m still going to install it, but I’ll be heavily modifying the hosts file and monitoring outgoing connections. If Microsoft feels that they can circumvent their own hosts file, I’ll teach myself how to block connections at the modem itself.
OH AND DID I MENTION THAT WINDOWS 7 AND WINDOWS 8 RECEIVED FORCED UPDATES TO DO THE EXACT SAME?
I don’t think I did.
There are probably between 1 and 2 billion PCs worldwide. Let's take the midpoint, 1.5B.
So, 5% have switched to Windows 10. Wow, you could have knocked me over with a feather....
There are probably between 1 and 2 billion PCs worldwide. Let's take the midpoint, 1.5B.
So, 5% have switched to Windows 10. Wow, you could have knocked me over with a feather....
How many installed it, took one look at it, scratched their head, read the reviews about privacy and wiped it?
I did just that in a VM. Total life of the VM < 10 hours. Gone and won't be coming back anytime soon.
Yes, I have Windows 10 on my Dell. Which I have not turned on for awhile, so there's that.