Windows 10 adoption up to 75M devices nearly one month after launch, Microsoft says

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.