Image: Rob Schultz/IDG
Microsoft is well on the way to achieving its goals with Windows 10, as the company boasts of more than 75 million installs in four weeks.
The statistic was revealed by Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of marketing for Windows on Devices. Mehdi noted that more than 90,000 unique PC and tablet models have seen the upgrade, including some PCs manufactured eight years ago.
The adoption rate is nearly twice that of Windows 8, which sold 40 million licenses after about a month. Microsoft has previously claimed that early Windows 8 adoption was roughly in line with Windows 7, suggesting that Windows 10 is rising much faster than either of those two versions. Windows 10 adoption has also blown past Windows Vista (20 million licenses in a month) and Windows XP (17 million licenses after one month).
Of course, Windows 10 isn’t on an equal playing field with its predecessors because Microsoft is giving upgrades away to all consumers running Windows 7 or higher. It’s an unprecedented move by Microsoft as the company tries to push Windows as a service, with revenue coming from both ad-supported and premium services that are built into the operating system.
On that note, Microsoft hasn’t said nearly as much about the extent to which people are using services like Cortana and the new Edge browser. But Mehdi did offer one encouraging sign: So far, the average Windows 10 device has downloaded six times more Windows Store apps compared to Windows 8. Getting Windows users to try those modern apps is a major part of Microsoft’s “Universal Apps” strategy, which allows developers to easily port their apps to Windows phones, Xbox consoles, and eventually HoloLens.
Why this matters: Microsoft still has a lot to prove and a long way to go. The company has set a goal of getting Windows 10 onto a billion devices within three years, and with more than half of the world’s 1.5 billion PC users still running Windows 7, it’s too early to roll out the “Mission Accomplished” banner. Still, Microsoft has at least proven that people aren’t so apathetic toward Windows that they’ll turn down a free upgrade.
