Microsoft reaches 3/5 of its Windows devices goal

Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system has reached a new milestone recently; the operating system is installed on more than 600 million devices as of November 2017 according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella who revealed the figure at the company's annual shareholder's meeting.

When Microsoft launched Windows 10 back in 2015, it set a very ambitious goal of getting the operating system on 1 billion devices over the course of two or three years.

Microsoft managed to get a lot of devices to upgrade to Windows 10 in the first year after release through a combination of offering the upgrade for free to customers, and some shady practices which practically forced the upgrade on some Windows 7 or Windows 8 systems.

The installed device count reached 200 million active devices at the end of 2015, and 500 million in May 2017.

Now, six months later, the figure increased to 600 million active devices, or 3/5 of Microsoft's initial goal of getting 1 billion devices on the operating system in the first couple of years.

As Woody Leonhard mentions on his site AskWoody, Nadella's figure reveals active devices and not active users. It is unclear what device types Microsoft included in the figure; the most likely explanation is that the company included any device that runs Windows 10 and meets the "active device" criteria.

This would mean that the figure includes Xbox One devices, embedded systems, tablets, smartphones, the Surface Hub, and any other device type that runs Windows 10.

Microsoft still has a couple of months before Windows 10 reaches the three year anniversary mark in July 2018. If the current trend continues, figures could rise another 100 million or so active devices to 700 million in total.

Microsoft will likely miss the 1 billion devices figure by year three however, and may need another year or even more than that to reach that initial goal.

The 1 billion devices mark would not be that far-off if Microsoft's Windows 10 mobile strategy would not have been a total disaster.

Windows 10 PC OS versions worldwide

In related notes, AdDuplex released its Windows 10 versions report for November 2017 as Günter Born noted on his site. The company accumulates the information from about 5000 Windows Store applications that use the company's SDK.

According to the report, devices running the Fall Creators Update edition hit 20.4% worldwide in November 2017. The Creators Update still dominates the field with its 63.5% of installations, and the Anniversary Update follows in third-place with 13.6% of all installations