Microsoft Says Windows 10 Is Now On More Than 800 Million Devices

Microsoft has resumed providing Windows 10 installation numbers on a more regular basis. On March 7, Microsoft officials said that Windows 10 is now installed on more than 800 million “active” devices, up from 700 million as of last fall.

Microsoft revealed the newest Windows 10 installation number via a tweet by Corporate Vice President of Modern Life & Devices Yusuf Mehdi.

“Thank you to all our customers and partners for helping us achieve 800 million #Windows10 devices and the highest customer satisfaction in the history of Windows,” Mehdi tweeted on March 7.

For a while, Microsoft’s Windows 10 installation count was stalled at “nearly 700 million.”Word is (from Petri.com’s Brad Sams) the reason Microsoft stopped providing regular updates to that number was that officials had been counting Windows 10 installations in virtual machines. Once they corrected for this by no longer counting Windows 10 running in VMs, the tally of Windows 10 installations began again.

Microsoft’s “monthly active devices” metric is for devices that have been “active” in the past 28 days. It includes Windows 10 on PCs, tablets, phones, Xbox consoles, HoloLens and Surface Hub devices, and includes all of the various feature updates of Windows 10.

Microsoft’s self-stated goal in 2015 was to have Windows 10 running actively on 1 billion devices within two to three years of its initial release in 2015. Microsoft officials conceded in 2017 that it would take the company longer than that to hit the 1 billion mark, likely as the result of Microsoft’s failure to get phones running Windows 10 to gain traction.―ZD Net