Looks like Microsoft has an uphill task at hand. The company seems to be struggling to exceed the milestone of 700 million active Windows 10 devices, as the adoption of the OS has slowed down.
Or, at least, looks like so.
Redmond, however, expects the transition to the new operating system to accelerate in the coming months, as we approach the January 2020 end of support date for Windows 7. But right now, things appear to be stagnating a bit.
Which itself is surprising considering the hundreds of millions of new hardware that is sold every year.
As it turns out, the reason why Windows 10 has not crossed the 700 million mark is because users are still holding on to Windows 7, a version of the OS that was released all the way back in 2009. Right now, it is the world’s number one desktop operating system with a market share of 43%.
While the same third-party figures have Windows 10 at 34%.
This has resulted in a situation where Microsoft announced that Windows 10 was running on 600 million devices back in November 2017, and the company was forced to say that it’s getting closer to the 700 million active installs target at BUILD this year.
In fact, it was a bit of a mix up back then, when some company officials actually claimed it had crossed that milestone, before a correction was sent out.
Fast forward to now, and CEO Satya Nadella revealed during an analyst call following the company’s most recent earnings report, where he still pandered the close to 700 million active installs figure.
Long story short, the company has a real fear that Windows 7 could become the new Windows XP, with users refusing to switch despite the end of support for the old OS.
It took Microsoft years and years of efforts to deal with Windows XP.
Let’s just hope this is not the case now.
