Microsoft Windows 10 now running on 1 billion monthly active devices

[Karlston]

Microsoft Windows 10 now running on 1 billion monthly active devices

 

2 years later than predicted, Microsoft may have finally reached its goal of 1 billion Windows 10 users. Microsoft today officially announced that Windows 10 is now running on 1 billion monthly active devices.

 

Microsoft last announced 900 million Windows 10 users in September 2019, and since then the PC market has seen a significant bump due to the end of life of Windows 10, and Microsoft has reported strong sales of Windows 10 to both OEMs and companies. In the last 6 months, Windows 10 had 100 million new monthly active devices, taking the total to 1 billion.

 

Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President, Modern Life, Search & Devices at Microsoft, commented the following regarding Windows 10’s big milestone.

From pioneering seamless touch and pen experiences, to enabling biometric log-in with Windows Hello, and with experiences like the Your Phone app, enabling Android users to connect their phone to their PC—we strive to meet people where they are.

 

And this innovation continues, bringing Windows to the cloud to make Windows 10 through Azure and virtual machines available on nearly every platform, from Mac to iOS or even Chromebooks. We will strive to make Windows the most accessible operating system on the planet regardless of where our users are, or what device they are on.

Reaching a billion people with Windows 10 is just the beginning. We will invest in Windows not only within Windows 10 for PCs but also across many other Windows editions, serving diverse customer needs including Windows IoT, Windows 10 Teams edition for Surface Hub, Windows Server, Windows Mixed Reality on HoloLens, Windows 10 in S mode, Windows 10X and more.

 

Source: Microsoft Windows 10 now running on 1 billion monthly active devices  (MSPoweruser)

[Karlston]

One and a half years late, Microsoft finally puts Windows 10 over the 1 billion mark

It took Windows 7's retirement to put Windows 10 on 1 billion devices.

Getty Images / Microsoft

 

Microsoft today claimed that Windows 10 powered a billion devices, a milestone the company originally said it would meet between one and a half and two and a half years ago.

 

"Over one billion people have chosen Windows 10 across 200 countries resulting in more than one billion active Windows 10 devices," asserted Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president, in a March 16 post to a company blog.

 

The bulk of those devices were undoubtedly desktop and notebook PCs, although Microsoft also tallied Xbox game consoles, which run a version of Windows 10, as well as extremely niche devices, like the Surface Hub.

 

Microsoft set the billion-or-bust objective months before it launched Windows 10. In April 2015, the Redmond, Wash. firm's chief operating system executive, Terry Myerson, said, "Our goal is that within two to three years of Windows 10's release there will be one billion devices running Windows 10."

 

Windows 10 was released at the end of July 2015, so Myerson's two-year mark would have been July 2017 (32 months ago) and his three-year target, July 2018 (20 months ago).

 

At the time, analysts said Microsoft's ambitious goal was actually conservative or if not that, then certainly reachable. Yet less than a year after Windows 10's debut, Microsoft had disowned the billion-device target.

 

"Due to the focusing of our phone hardware business, it will take longer than [end of fiscal year 2018] for us to reach our goal of 1 billion monthly active devices," a company spokesperson said.

 

The "focusing" the spokesperson mentioned was a reference to the disastrous path Microsoft forged for its mobile business. Less than two years after announcing the acquisition of Nokia's phone assets — and just weeks before launching Windows 10 — Microsoft admitted the move was a catastrophe when it wrote off $7.6 billion. The resulting collapse of Microsoft's smartphone strategy, along with a cratering of consumer PC sales — all that kept that business afloat were commercial sales as businesses prepped for Windows 10 — put the billion out of reach.

 

It wasn't the first time that Microsoft's number crunching led it to set boastful goals. In 2012, then-CEO Steve Ballmer seemed to say that the at-the-time impending Windows 8 would be on 500 million devices within its first year. Although Microsoft later contended that Ballmer's comments had been miscast, he and others at Microsoft kept arguing that upgrades to Windows 8 would create a lucrative audience for app developers. In the end, Windows 8 was judged a flop, peaking at under 18% of all Windows devices, a lower crest than even Windows Vista six years earlier.

 

Today's 1 billion device claim came remarkably close to a Computerworld estimate based on data from analytics vendor Net Applications. According to the California company's February data, Windows 10 accounted for 65.1% of all versions of Windows. Microsoft has long touted the number 1.5 billion as the installed base of Windows PCs. The 65.1% of 1.5 billion for February represented approximately 976 million desktop and notebook personal computers, just a baker's-dozen-plus-one millions shy of Microsoft's magic number.

 

Windows 10 has only open seas in front of it. With Windows 7 now retired from support and Windows 8/8.1 already under a 5% share, it won't be long before 10 is the last Windows standing.

 

It was no coincidence, of course, that Windows 10 reached the billion benchmark after the veteran Windows 7 had been pushed aside. One could conclude, then, that Microsoft might only have made its time-sensitive goal if it had moved up Windows 7's retirement two years.

 

 

Source: One and a half years late, Microsoft finally puts Windows 10 over the 1 billion mark (Computerworld - Gregg Keizer)

[duddy]

Windows 10 has reached 1 billion monthly active devices

 

 

 

Microsoft's Windows 10 is a success - the company reports over 1 billion monthly active devices. This comes less than 5 years after it launched and in that short period of time it has gone far beyond the PC.

 

It does indeed power plenty of desktop PCs along with 80,000 different models and configurations of laptops from 1,000 manufacturers. And, naturally, it's at the heart of the new Xbox consoles, including the upcoming Xbox Series X.

 

Microsoft is playing with different form factors - going from small screens like on the Surface Pro to huge ones on the Surface Hub 2S interactive whiteboard. Even more interesting is the dual-screen Surface Neo, which will run a special version of the OS dubbed Windows 10X. Then there are the unorthodox devices like the HoloLens (which is also powered by Windows 10).

 

Corporations love it - 100% of the Fortune 500 companies are using Windows 10 devices. Microsoft promises faster updates to those who transition from Windows 7 to 10. Much faster when it comes to the new Chromium-based Edge browser as it is decoupled from OS updates.

 

Microsoft relies on its Insider Program to catch issues with Windows, which currently boasts close to 18 million members hailing from every country around the world.

"We are inspired by the ways you use Windows 10, and we look forward to seeing how you continue to use these billion devices in new and exciting ways to power the world," writes Microsoft.

 

There's only one failure in Windows 10's history and it's a big one - it barely made a dent in the smartphone market and is gone from it completely (the Surface Duo dual screen phone runs Android).

 

Source

[steven36]

It only took them 4 years and 7 months and they wanted  those billion users  4 years ago  , They could not even  give Windows 10  away many  of us  who tried  it rolled  back even. Microsoft Windows  has had over  a Billion users   for many many years . Only reason Windows 10 got a billion users  was Windows  7 ran out of updates  and the masses  never adopted Windows 8/8.1  . Most people  don't use windows because it's the latest  and no so greatest they never have every OS  since Windows XP  people stay  on  almost the same version  from 10-14 years  some hold outs stayed on XP  for a lot longer even,.

 

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Some consumers  use  windows to game  and most companies (non server segment of that) still run Windows due to having some applications that are legacy but only run there and they either can't or won't code new ones from scratch to replace them using more modern languages (compared to COBOL and Fortran XD) that run on something else. On the upside, more things are being moved to the cloud and accessed via browsers making fewer and fewer ties to the OS itself. The main issue then becomes user management (active directory for example).

 

As more and more  things move to the cloud the less  companies going to need Windows  OS .It  has nothing to do with  anything new in Windows people stay on Windows because of  Win 32  that been around since Windows 95. Anything new that has to do with the Cloud  you don't windows for that even.

 

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Win32 is the 32-bit application programming interface (API) for versions of Windows from 95 onwards. The API consists of functions implemented, as with Win16, in system DLLs. The core DLLs of Win32 are kernel32.dll, user32.dll, and gdi32.dll. Win32 was introduced with Windows NT. The version of Win32 shipped with Windows 95 was initially referred to as Win32c, with c meaning compatibility. This term was later abandoned by Microsoft in favor of Win32.

 

[Karlston]

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