Windows 10 Momentum Slows, Adoption Rate Still Outpacing Windows 7

During Microsoft's opening Ignite Conference keynote, Yusuf Mehdi, the Corporate Vice President for the Windows and Devices Group, shared that Windows 10 is now running on over 400 million monthly active devices. He added that this rate of adoption is outpacing Windows 7 by 115% overall.

This is the first momentum update we have heard from the Redmond company since June 29, 3016, just one month before the free upgrade offer ended for Windows 7 and 8.1 users.

That the number of monthly active users dropped following the end of the free offer should not be a surprise for anyone. That is the nature of cutting off a freebie, then offering the same item for $119 (Windows 10 Home) or $199 (Windows 10 Pro).

Of course, the momentum numbers Microsoft has been providing is a combined number that includes active devices on Windows 10 and no differentiation of whether those devices are in corporate environments or in your Aunt Sally's living room. 

Beyond the enterprise customers that are migrating to Windows 10, the spigot for increasing the monthly active users for Windows 10 from this point forward on the consumer side will now come primarily from new PC and tablet purchases.

So let's take a closer look at the last 14 months worth of progress for Windows 10 and see what the trends have been and just how much adoption dropped with the end of the free upgrade offer.

Here is a look at the percentages of increase and decrease between each of these cycles:

Some key observations for these numbers:

So the job of continuing adoption of Windows 10 and feeding this monthly active users number now falls to the corporate environment. The question is whether there are enough corporate Windows 10 upgrades to meet the 1 billion device goal originally stated in 2015.

For instance, Mehdi mentioned the United States Department of Defense and their plans to eventually move 4 million devices to Windows 10, but you can see those kind of adoptions, while very big and impressive, do not move the monthly active user needle very far at all.

Of course, we will continue to keep an eye on these and other numbers from Microsoft so stay tuned for more.

Make sure you keep up with all of our Microsoft Ignite coverage both here on SuperSite: Windows and ITPro: Windows during this week.

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