It is no coincidence that Microsoft has announced several new partnerships with Chinese companies and government entities during the same week that the Chinese president is visiting Microsoft and other Seattle area technology companies.
These agreements include cloud services, training, startups, Azure, Office 365, local economic development and the maintenance of Windows for various entities.
The most visible agreement from this week is between Microsoft and Baidu, one of the countries most visited Internet gateways in China.
The new partnership will mean that Baidu.com will become the default homepage and search engine for Microsoft Edge in Windows 10 and their Windows 10 Express will be the process used for Chinese Windows users to easily upgrade to Windows 10.
Baidu will also build Universal Windows Platform apps for search, video, cloud and maps on Windows 10 for distribution to Windows users in China.
There was one interesting detail in the Windows 10 in China blog post from Microsoft that I have not seen discussed a lot and that is Windows 10 being installed on 10 million devices in China.
Since Microsoft has not provided any new Windows 10 momentum numbers since last month when they announced there were 75 million devices world-wide which are running Windows 10, I am forced to associate that 10 million devices in China alongside of the overall 75 million upgrades and installs.
That is 13.3% of the total official Windows 10 installs so far. It would be interesting to see updated momentum numbers for Windows 10, which is currently speculated to be anywhere between 81 and 100 million devices, and get updated numbers for country specific adoption.
There is no doubt the numbers have grown but that 10 million installs in China, from even a month ago, seem very small considering China accounts for nearly 20% of the worlds population and subsequently has hundreds of millions of PCs which run Windows.
