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Windows 10 on 500 million monthly active devices

by on11 May 2017


Up 200 million on a year ago


At its Build developer conference, Microsoft has told the assorted throngs and riff-raff that Windows 10 has now passed 500 million monthly active devices.

To put that number into some perspective, this time last year the company was cheering the fact that it was on 300 million systems.

However all these numbers are far lower than Vole originally hoped. At launch, the ambition was to reach 1 billion devices over the first two to three years of availability. At a half of that target one would think that Vole would be writing off its Windows 10 experiment as a failure.

To be fair though that billion target assumed that Microsoft would get off its arse and release Windows 10 Mobile and that this would provide 50 million or more devices a year. Vole basically gave up on that.

Still if it were the Apple operating system, the Tame Apple Press would claim that 500 million devices was super cool and great, and be claiming that the software company was the best in the world.

To be fair the billion-user target was always going to be optimistic, particularly with the PC market still in the doldrums.

Windows 10 is still the fastest-growing Windows release of all time. That growth was stimulated by the free upgrade offered to Windows 7 and 8.1 users during the first year of Windows 10's life.

The big hurdle for Microsoft is enterprise adoption. Vole has collected some early enterprise wins, such as the US Department of Defence certifying and adopting it quickly.

Last modified on 11 May 2017
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