Microsoft succeeded to achieve its goals with Windows 10. The company announces that in just four weeks more than 75 million Windows 10 installs were made worldwide.
The statistic was revealed by Microsoft's corporate vice president of marketing for Windows on Devices, Yusuf Mehdi. He noted that more than 90,000 unique tablets and PC models are running now the upgrade, including some PCs model manufactured eight years ago.
According to Microsoft, the adoption rate for Windows 10 is near twice that of Windows 8. At its time, Windows 8 sold 40 million licenses after about a month. Previously, Microsoft claimed that early Windows 8 adoption was roughly in line with Windows 7. This is suggesting that the adoption rate for the new Windows 10 is rising much faster than either of those two versions.
Microsoft Windows 10 adoption has also gone past Windows Vista with its 20 million licenses in a month and Windows XP with only 17 million licenses after the first month.
Of course, Windows 10 isn't competing with its predecessors on an equal playing field because Microsoft is giving away upgrades to all consumers running Windows 7 or higher. This is an unprecedented move by the company as it tries to push Windows as a service with revenue coming from both premium and ad-supported services built into the new operating system.
Microsoft hasn't declared much about the extent to which people are using the new services and features coming with Windows 10, such as Cortana and the Edge browser. But Mehdi did offer a clue by saying that so far the average Windows 10 device has downloaded six times more Windows Store apps compared to Windows 8. A major part of Microsoft's "Universal Apps" strategy is getting Windows users to try those modern apps. This also allows developers to port easily their apps to Xbox consoles, Windows phones and eventually HoloLens.
Microsoft still has a long way to go and a lot to prove. The company has set an ambitious goal of having Windows 10 installed onto a billion devices within three years. But as for now, with more than half of the world's 1.5 billion PC users still using Windows 7, it's too early to predict if the company will be able to accomplish this goal. At least Microsoft has proven until now that people aren't more likely to turn to a new OS offered as a free upgrade.
