It has taken almost five years but Microsoft has officially reached its goal of bringing Windows 10 to 1 billion devices. Initially, Microsoft planned to hit this milestone by 2018, but the lack of success for Windows Mobile slowed that progress down significantly. 

With mobile out of the equation, Microsoft's Windows 10 install base spans across desktop PCs, laptops, Xbox One consoles, the HoloLens, Surface and a few other devices. A large part of this growth comes from businesses catching up and moving on from Windows 7 and XP, although Windows 7 in particular is still quite popular, maintaining a 31 percent market share. Windows 10 can be found on over 50 percent of global desktop PCs.

Microsoft hit 600 million Windows 10 installs back in 2017 and hit 900 million in September last year, so it was only a matter of time before the 1 billion device milestone was reached. After offering free Windows 10 upgrades for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users for a full year, Microsoft had hoped to speed up growth but for various reasons, momentum never picked up to that level.

Microsoft has had its issues with Windows 10 feature updates over the years too, although the process has fewer issues now, with better testing methods now in place.

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KitGuru Says: With Windows 10 nearing five years old, we would normally find ourselves looking ahead to the next major OS version at this point. However, Microsoft seems focused on evolving Windows 10 for the foreseeable future, so we don't anticipate a ‘Windows 11' any time soon. When did you upgrade to Windows 10? Are any of you still clinging to an older version of Windows instead? 

 

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