Windows 10: No, Windows did not lose 400 million devices in the past three years

Microsoft keeps a tight watch on Windows usage information. Ever so often, a company executive highlights Windows usage numbers, usually to demonstrate the immense base of users that Windows has. Sometimes, it is done to show confidence in a product. This happened the last time when Microsoft projected that its new Windows 10 operating system would be installed on more than a billion PC devices just a few years after its 2015 release. Never happened, that one.

Last week, Microsoft executive Yusuf Mehdi published a long article about the end of support for Windows 10 and how much better Windows 11 and the company's Copilot+ PCs are.

Mehdi revealed that Windows was running over 1 billion monthly active devices. ZDnet's Ed Bott noted that the figure was 400 million devices short. Just three years ago, Microsoft claimed that Windows was powering over 1.4 billion devices. Bott concluded that Microsoft must have lost 400 million devices in that time.

He reasoned that Microsoft's legal department would have objected to the use of "over 1 billion", if the figure was still around 1.4 billion devices. Bott concluded that Microsoft must have lost 400 million devices in just three and a half years, stating that users might have dropped PCs for mobile devices.

Microsoft corrects the paragraph


When you check out the article by Mehdi now, you will notice that it references 1.4 billion monthly active devices again: "Nearly 40 years later, that same vision continues to drive us forward. Today, Windows is the most widely used operating system, powering over 1.4 billion monthly active devices through an open and flexible platform that connects people, ideas and innovations on the Windows PCs they use every day around the world.".

Microsoft must have revised the opening paragraph after Bott's story broke.

A drop of more than 25 percent of the monthly active devices would have been a serious blow to the Windows ecosystem. There has not been a major event that could have fueled that drop, but one is coming this year.

With Windows 10 dropping out of support, hundreds of millions of Windows 10 PCs won't get updates anymore nor an option to upgrade to Windows 11 via Windows Update. Users may extend the life officially by a year by joining the Extended Security Updates program. But what is happening afterwards? Sure, some devices will be upgraded to Windows 11 bypassing the hardware checks, others may jump on the business-ESU-bandwagon to extend updates by another two years. Linux, as much as I'd like to see it gaining more traction as Windows 10 devices are converted to Linux machines, will likely remain a niche product, unless someone comes up with a dead-easy migration tool.

Still, the end of support for Windows 10 could become a massive disruptor in the next one or two years.

Now You: What do you think is happening in the next one or two years? Will Windows usage drop significantly? Will most users purchase new Windows 11 PCs?

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Windows 7 License Sales Cross 400 Million Mark

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Cannot paste into Windows Mail

Hi,

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