Within 24 hours of releasing Windows 10 in July 2015, Microsoft announced that it was already installed on over 14 million devices. After that, Microsoft continued to provide regular updates on the progress of its latest operating system… until September 26, 2016 – the date on which it revealed that 400 million devices were running the OS.
Microsoft’s silence since then has been somewhat conspicuous, especially after the company admitted that it would not meet its target of one billion Windows 10 devices within three years of launch – a failure that, bizarrely, the company pinned on its already-struggling phone hardware division.
Today, over seven months later, Microsoft announced that there are now 500 million devices running Windows 10. That includes not just PCs – which represent the overwhelming majority of devices in use on the platform, but also phones, Xbox One consoles, HoloLens headsets, IoT devices, Surface Hub collaboration displays, and more.
Even so, PCs continue to make up the lion’s share of the platform, and with the recent launch of its new Windows 10 S edition – which will be available on certain PCs, but will remain limited to running apps available from the Windows Store – Microsoft is placing more emphasis on creating apps for Windows 10 PCs over other devices for the first time since the operating system’s launch.
In the table below, you can see how the total number of Windows 10 installations has progressed since the OS was released almost two years ago. Obviously, installations within the first 24 hours were far higher than in subsequent months, but as you can see, the average daily installations - which includes new devices - has still slowed down considerably since the free Windows 10 upgrade offer ended a year after the operating system's original release:
| Date (official figures only) | Rolling total | Days since total last updated | Average new additions per day (to nearest thousand) |
| Jul 30, 2015 | 14,000,000 | 1 | 14,000,000 |
| Aug 27, 2015 | 75,000,000 | 28 | 2,180,000 |
| Oct 6, 2015 | 110,000,000 | 40 | 875,000 |
| Jan 4, 2016 | 200,000,000 | 90 | 1,000,000 |
| Mar 30, 2016 | 270,000,000 | 86 | 814,000 |
| May 5, 2016 | 300,000,000 | 36 | 833,000 |
| Jun 29, 2016 | 350,000,000 | 55 | 909,000 |
| Sep 26, 2016 | 400,000,000 | 88 | 568,000 |
| May 10, 2017 | 500,000,000 | 223 | 448,000 |
But despite the slowdown, Windows 10 is still growing at a considerable rate, so don't start writing those Windows eulogies just yet.
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