Robust Holidays Bring Windows 10 Tally Up to 200 Million
Windows 10 activations soared during the holiday season as Microsoft kicked off the new year saying a total of 200 million systems are now running the operating system.
That is nearly double the 110 million licenses last reported by Microsoft. More than 40 percent of new Windows 10 systems were activated since Black Friday six weeks ago, Microsoft said today. That represents the fastest growth trajectory of any version of Windows, Microsoft said in a blog post today. It outpaced Windows 7 by approximately 140 percent and Windows 8 by nearly 400 percent, the company said.
"We are also seeing accelerating and unprecedented demand for Windows 10 among enterprise and education customers," wrote Microsoft Senior VP Yusuf Mehdi. "As of today, more than 76 percent of our enterprise customers are in active pilots of Windows 10, and we now have over 22 million devices running Windows 10 across enterprise and education customers."
Indeed, I stopped into the new Microsoft flagship store on 5th Avenue in New York City during the week after Christmas and the store was packed -- and it wasn't just the Xbox department. Customers were looking at a variety of PC types and even the floor dedicated to Dell PCs was crowded.
The growth of Windows 10 doesn't come as a surprise and it's not just consumers who are propelling its growth. According to a Redmond magazine survey conducted in November, one-third of a sample of 759 readers said they have Windows 10-based systems in production with a quarter planning to do so this year.
Are you one of the 200 million users? Share your views on Windows 10 and the device you are running it on.
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 01/04/2016 at 12:01 PM