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When Microsoft launched Windows ten, the company said information technology wanted the OS to run on a billion devices within three years. The death of Windows Mobile made this incommunicable, and the company later walked dorsum the prediction as a result. Yet, the Os has made inroads nonetheless. Earlier this spring, Satya Nadella said Windows ten had hitting 500 1000000 devices. Today, he's claiming it's on 600 million systems.

Windows 10's rollout has been slowed by its lack of uptake on mobile devices, and by the relatively boring stride of sales in the larger PC market place. While the PC market is expected to grow somewhat in the next few years, the jump isn't annihilation like as large as information technology would need to be to drive a billion devices running Windows x by the Os'due south iii-yr ceremony. But 600 million systems is nothing to sneeze at, and Windows could still hit its goal in the 2022-2020 range, thanks to long-term PC replacement schedules.

Is the Chinese Marketplace Pulling Down Windows 10 Adoption Figures?

There'southward some reason to think that reports of Windows ten'due south anemic share growth are being distorted past the Chinese markets. When nosotros covered a set of highly unusual changes to Steam's usual hardware survey earlier in November, readers pointed out that Thespian Unknown'southward Battlegrounds had but recently starting winning large numbers of Chinese players, and this did indeed seem to be related to a sudden skewing of Steam's data set back to Windows 7. PCMag's Matthew Humphries notes that according to Netmarketshare, Windows 10 has just a 29 per centum market share. Netmarketshare has very different numbers than Statcounter, but Statcounter allows us to expect at region-specific data that Netmarketshare doesn't make bachelor for gratuitous. Statcounter'south data prepare shows Windows 10 is much less popular in Red china than in other areas. Here's the Chinese comparison:

StatCounter-W10

Windows 7 remains the dominant Os in China, with Windows XP still property ~18 percent of the market. Windows 10 is sitting at twenty.42 percent of the marketplace in this comparing. But this is unique to the Chinese market. Europe shows Windows ten with a 46.viii percent market share, compared with 37.8 percent for Windows 7. In North America, Win 10'due south market share is 49.13 percent, compared with 38.75 percent for Win 7. India, like China, shows a much greater tilt towards Windows 7, with 54.viii percent of systems using that OS and 27.xix per centum using Windows x.

In short, rumors of Windows ten's low adoption rates are exaggerated past the very different applied science cycles in developing countries like India and China every bit compared with established markets in the US and Europe. And while a much smaller percentage of the population of India or China have a laptop or desktop compared with the The states or Europe, that'southward partly offset by the fact that the absolute number of people living in those nations dwarfs the United states of america or EU. If 100 per centum of the Usa population endemic a Windows 10 system, and 12 percent of the combined populations of People's republic of china and Bharat owned a Windows vii system, Windows 7 would accept more than than l pct of the total Windows market.

Ultimately, Windows 10 appears to be doing pretty well in the US and European marketplace. If it starts winning marketplace share in Bharat and China, it could turn its global adoption figures around in curt lodge.

Now read: Windows ten: The Best Hidden Features, Tips, and Tricks