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Operating Systems Microsoft Windows

Windows 10 Now On 400 Million Active Devices, Says Microsoft (thurrott.com) 153

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.
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Windows 10 Now On 400 Million Active Devices, Says Microsoft

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 26, 2016 @01:28PM (#52963637)

    willingly?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Word on the street is that the majority of devices running it have become inactive so the numbers may be much better for Microsoft.
    • 350 Million are those surface tablets written off by Microsoft.
    • willingly?

      Precisely.

      At the rate things are going, W10 will become the most successful and rapid malware spread since the old "I love you" email virus of 1999...

      (no really, I'm fully willing to wager that, say, at least 50% of the installs were pushed onto an ignorant public who would not have otherwise bothered, 10-20% more were shoved onto machines whose owner consciously wanted no such thing, maybe 10-20% from people who actually wanted the thing, and the rest just showed up on new computers.)

  • Are still running Win 7

    • Are still running Win 7

      I, for one.

    • Re:And how many (Score:4, Informative)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Monday September 26, 2016 @01:49PM (#52963809) Homepage

      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.

      • 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...

      • Win XP is still alive. I saw it just yesterday in an NPO I did community services for (I got 10 hours for shooting model rockets with my kids in a CA county park).

      • As others have said, XP is no-where near dead, and that was with Windows 7 being the shiny new alternative.

        Windows 7 will be several factors harder to kill than XP due to the platform's stability (no thanks in part to M$'s recent efforts), it's huge market share, and the ubiquitous hatred of Win10.

  • by ausekilis ( 1513635 ) on Monday September 26, 2016 @01:31PM (#52963653)
    6 million [pocketnow.com] Surface tablets, ~20 million XBox Ones, [techtimes.com]~20 million [mspoweruser.com] 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?
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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.

    • As someone who makes and customizes retail software, I can tell you that existing POS registers will NEVER upgrade from XP. That's right, XP. Not even Windows 7. And the reason is because it just works, and the hardware requirements are so low. New ones coming out will likely have a stripped down version of 10 for retail, but there's no such animal as "upgrading POS registers to Windows 10".

    • The upgrade nag changed from "hit the x, and it stops the nag", to "hit the x and windows upgrade remains scheduled" so you wake up a few days later and windows 10 is installed.

      I consider myself a hawk about those things and got caught by it, 100% not wanting to upgrade.

    • ... Maybe ATM's and POS registers have been upgraded?

      They are all gonna be a real POS now!

    • by Dracos ( 107777 )

      Maybe ATM's and POS registers have been upgraded?

      Doubtful at this point. Many of those vendors are being targeted with Win10 IoT, which hasn't been available long enough for new systems to be developed and deployed. In 6 to 12 months we'll start to see all the old XP-based POS, ATM, and other kiosk solutions get replaced with RaspberryPi + Win10 IoT, which is the intended market of the OS (well, Universal App bootloader), not hobbyists.

    • XBox One runs Windows 10??

  • by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Monday September 26, 2016 @01:33PM (#52963663)
    Somewhere in an Italian restaurant, Clippy smiles at the 400M copies of Cortana and thinks "revenge is a dish best served cold."
    • Clippy is alive and stronger than ever. Google decided that darkening your phone screen to make sure you see some new feature was a good idea.
  • Thank god! (and I'm not even religious!)

  • one of the x million claimed users has W10 silently sleeping on a HD somewhere laying around on the floor waiting to be used at one point, when I get around....

    Got more important stuff to do.

    Ah - when I try again and plug on the disk, network cable is unplugged and there is somewhere a printout of this:

    http://www.howtogeek.com/22386... [howtogeek.com]

    which I have to read in more detail...

  • by Maxwell ( 13985 ) on Monday September 26, 2016 @01:49PM (#52963803) Homepage
    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.
    • Surface RT version of "Windows 10"

      There isn't a windows 10 version of RT, though. All they did was put in an update that inserted a half-assed windows 10 look-a-like menu into RT 8.1.

      They abandoned Windows RT after the Surface 2 came out, and before Windows 10 was released.

      Also the Xbox One does in fact have a true version of Windows 10, as well as the phone. The 10 OS was designed to be multi-platform, or what they call "Continuum," in that they can have the same OS and the same experience across console, phone and PC, all with the same co

      • Continuum isn't a cross-compiler, MS bet the mobile farm on Intel producing mobile chipsets. MS can't target ARM for crap, that's why they dropped RT and is also why they're now screwed in mobile.

    • They all run on the exact same kernel and have the same WinRT runtime. The only difference is ARM vs x86 compiler. They're as similar as Ubuntu for ARM and ubuntu for x86.

      Xbox is a bit of a unique case in that it run's AAA titles in a stripped down VM and apps in another VM. But the Apps VM is effectively Windows 10 Desktop but with a different explorer.exe

      Windows 10 Mobile isn't running something like WinRT Mobile, like Windows Mobile 6 ran .NET Mobile it's a full WinRT.NET implementation with the full

  • by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Monday September 26, 2016 @01:58PM (#52963883)

    ...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.

  • Security is Microsoft number one priority! They make it their priority to have no security!

  • If mine that i use once a month to install update is considered active?

  • Reading it wrong (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tgrigsby ( 164308 ) on Monday September 26, 2016 @02:18PM (#52964097) Homepage Journal

    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.

  • UPS is to deliver a machine this afternoon w/Win10 installed. I have my Debian install media right here, so I'm all set.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Still counts as a Win10 license sold.
      So does every OEM PC with a preinstalled Win7 or 8.1 Pro now. OEMs are forced to use "Win10 Pro with downgrade rights" licenses, which get counted - you guessed it - as a Win10 sale.

  • Despite the brass ring TOS of whatever version you were previously running, an infection is as an infection does.

    Also, read your antibiotic prescription carefully.
    * may include systemd[**]

    [**] First we keep Berlin, then we take Warsaw, someday soon we annex Prague, and eventually perhaps we'll incite the Arabs to cut Manhattan down to size.

    All hail PC-BSD: the systemd-free libertarian antibiotic of last resort.

  • "Windows 10 Now On 400 Million Active Devices, Says Microsoft (thurrott.com) "

    Shouldn't that be: Windows 10 Now on 400 Million "previously active" devices.

    • by ickpoo ( 454860 )

      I'm actually curious as to what their definition of active is. I have a Windows 10 / Android hybrid tablet. It pretty much just run Android, but, I have booted it into Windows a couple of times and have even let it apply the anniversary update. But, this machine is really only being used when it is running Android. So, how is it counted?

  • All those devices are very active downloading updates and crap from Microsoft.

  • deliberately buys refurbished laptops and desktops with Windows 7 Professional on them, or buys new PCs with 8.1 Pro and downgrade rights.

    We will never willingly move from 7 Professional due to the massive violation of HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, and other laws that Windows 10 is both accused of AND has been verified doing. Seriously, I doubt you see any major hospital or other medical profession make the move to 10 -- willingly at any rate.

    Yes, eventually, we may have to move to Windows 10 but I am hoping that

  • Slashdot items on Windows OS are flamebait. Find something useful.
  • So can I use that 28 day timeframe when performing an enterprise agreement true-up on device numbers? 'Cause last time we were audited, every x86 device since the dawn of time was included, and I needed to justify the removal of every single device that had been disposed off or removed from production.
  • Just wiped out one install for Linux...

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