For the first time Windows 10 is officially running on 1 billion devices. Microsoft had an ambitious goal to get 1 billion devices running Windows 10 by 2017 or 2018. According to the company, this has finally happened, but 3-4 years later than expected.
Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President, Modern Life, Search & Devices at Microsoft, made the following statement:
Today we’re delighted to announce that over one billion people have chosen Windows 10 across 200 countries resulting in more than one billion active Windows 10 devices. We couldn’t be more grateful to our customers, partners and employees for helping us get here.
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Reaching a billion people with Windows 10 is just the beginning. We will invest in Windows not only within Windows 10 for PCs but also across many other Windows editions, serving diverse customer needs including Windows IoT, Windows 10 Teams edition for Surface Hub, Windows Server, Windows Mixed Reality on HoloLens, Windows 10 in S mode, Windows 10X and more.
Actually, Microsoft's stats include not only PCs but also devices like Xbox One consoles, and HoloLens.
It's not surprising that Windows 10 has such a huge number of users. Microsoft had done very aggressive marketing for Windows 7 and Windows 8 users by showing free upgrade notifications, tempting casual users to switch to it. There were cases of automatic upgrades too. Also, the company ended support for Windows 7, the earlier extremely popular OS among all users and companies across the world.
The final nail in the coffin for older systems was that you couldn't install any Windows version besides Windows 10 on newer devices due to lack of drivers.
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Thats good Bill, but that means that 6.5 billion are not, so stick that in your pipe and smoke it Mr. Gates
Gates is not in Microsoft anymore, he left it. You should now mention Satya Nadella in your curses.