Windows 7’s Looming End-of-Support Is Yet to Have an Impact on Windows 10 Adoption Rate

Microsoft’s Windows 10 numbers have always been riddled with confusion and over ambitiousness. The company announced meeting the milestone of 600 million active devices back in November, last year. Since then, the next 100 million chunk has taken quite a time and a lot of “nearly” statements from the Redmond software maker.

First, Terry Myerson accidentally dropped this number when he talked about leaving Microsoft back in March. Microsoft then supported these numbers during its Build 2018 Developer conference but clarified that it’s “nearly” not over 700 million. Then last month, Microsoft officially said that Windows 10 was powering over 700 million active devices. The Windows maker then rolled that back too saying it was an accident.

Microsoft is still using “nearly” with Windows 10’s 700 million userbase

Microsoft released its earnings report yesterday and held its Q4 FY2018 analyst call that revealed Windows 10 is yet to hit that 700 million target. This raises the question about what numbers make Microsoft use “nearly” when it has been 4 months since the company first hinted that nearly 700 million active devices were running its latest operating system. Does it mean the growth is at a standstill?

The company says active devices are machines that have been active in the past 28 days, including Windows 10 powered PCs, tablets, Xbox consoles, phones, HoloLens, and Surface Hub products. ZDNet reported that according to the company’s Investor Relations, “impact from the looming Windows 7 end-of-support date of January 2020 still has not yet had a material impact on Windows 10’s uptake.”

It is likely that Microsoft might see a significant hike in growth rate as organizations are forced to upgrade to Windows 10 just before the support for Windows 7 officially ends. That could also finally help the company meet its initial goal of having Windows 10 run on 1 billion active devices.