There are now 800 million devices running Windows 10 worldwide

By Zac Bowden
published

Windows 10 is now running on 800 million monthly active devices, just six months after reaching 700 million.

Microsoft Logo at Ignite
Microsoft Logo at Ignite (Image credit: Windows Central)

Microsoft has today announced (opens in new tab) that Windows 10 has surpassed 800 million monthly active devices half a year after surpassing 700 million in September last year. 800 million devices is very impressive, but it's nowhere near close to Microsoft's original goal of one billion Windows 10 devices in three years, which it missed last year.

Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Modern Life & Devices, Yusef Mehdi also says that Windows 10 has the highest satisfaction rate of any version of Windows ever, which is very impressive considering the last couple of Windows 10 feature updates have launched with a plethora of issues. Microsoft has been working hard to improve the overall reliability of Windows 10 this year, which should improve things for users.

Now that we've reached 800 million, it'll be interesting to see how long it takes to reach Microsoft's one billion goal. Will Windows 7's end of support increase the rate of new Windows 10 devices? We'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, what are your thoughts on this? Let us know.

Zac Bowden
Zac Bowden
Senior Editor

Zac Bowden is a Senior Editor at Windows Central. Bringing you exclusive coverage into the world of Windows on PCs, tablets, phones, and more. Also an avid collector of rare Microsoft prototype devices! Keep in touch on Twitter: @zacbowden.

31 Comments
  • It's been a long time since I spotted non-Windows 10 device in the wild.
  • Come to my work place then. We'll be updating to W10 before W7 EOL and contributing to the 1 billion.
  • My place too. Business sides uses Notebook, they are the 1st wave getting win10s.
    I'm a game programmer (our desktop is generally more powerful and more expensive), I can see more and more win10s each day. Newbies under me, uses Win10 already.
    So in the end of the transition, there'll be... 1000k win10s from one of our local studio?
  • When I travel I see Surface Pros everywhere. Taking Accela to NYC lots of Lenovos and even spotted a XPS 13.
  • I spend all my day on a college campus and there are glowing Apple logos everywhere. These kids are brainwashed. (I see a growing number of Surface Pros though. I know I have one.) And has anyone sat in a coffee place in Manhattan lately? Conspicuously pretending to edit video or produce music positively requires a MacBook.
  • If they are glowing Apple logos, then they are out of date Macs. Maybe they will upgrade to Windows with their next laptop purchase. :D
  • Haha you're right, I just meant shiny Apple logos. Well, OK, there are some glowing ones.
  • How is a Mac buyer brainwashed? They are really nice machines.
  • Not the 1 billion target
  • Yes, just as the first paragraph points out.
  • 100 million in six months? That seems faster...
  • Perhaps they could've hit 1 billion by now if they had doubled down on Windows 10 Mobile instead of killing it off. At the very least, UWP would've fared better. Sigh.
  • Yeah, and if they kept with Band, they would have had 1 percent of the fitness trackers market instead of zero. Damn Nadella!
  • Mozilla promises to target UWP using its funtional programming language - RUST.
  • I want a new phone. But want a WP. Believe it or not these new Androids are just now catching up to the Lumia 1520 of a few years ago. Nothing beats those "Live Tiles"... Nadella, we want a WP, not Android and especially not Apple with their boring icons. Microsoft have manufacturing support across the globe and you've been providing phone support to both
    Android and Apple why not let someone give us a WP?
  • I was just about to say the same thing. Had they stuck with W10M and had a viable product like Go a long time ago they would be at a Billion. Heck it's not even doubling down because I don't they they ever single downed. I just don't believe they put 100% effort behind it. They were barely focusing on phone even before 10. When was the last great phone marketing campaign after they stopped the Apple vs Google ads a long time ago? Why were they barely updating W10M like they were full version when it first came out. Look at some of the Surface ads. Why couldn't they do some of those with Phones except with more A+ celebrities and pitch people? How hard would it have been when they were placed in TV and movies for people to at least say Windows Phone or Surface? Where was the advertising at Super Bowls and major TV events? I still just don't buy that they made all this investment in UWP to give developers incentives to make apps or remove roadblocks preventing them from it. They did not do enough. How is a company you can by 2 or 3 times over refusing to make apps for you?
  • I bet the biggest driver are companies switching over from Windows 7. I finally got my Windows 7 work laptop replaced a few months ago with a new one running Windows 10.
  • It sounds like acceleration (700 to 800 after sitting at 700 for a while) and I can believe that's exactly what's going on, W7 upgrades. W10 is a very nice upgrade for W7, too. I think W7 users will be pleasantly surprised. Poor Windows 8 though.
  • Now, in comparison, I'd like to know how many:
    Android devices
    IOS devices
    Mac devices
    LINUX Devices
    Windows Mobile devices
    There are out there.
  • My official estimates: Android: 68 trillion (netting Google $0)
    iOS: 1 billion
    Mac: 1/3 billion (there's a 3 iDevice minimum if you want to be cool)
    Linux: three thousand nerds, a few drug dealer libertarians, and a billion servers
    WM: zero
  • "drug dealer libertarians" 😂
  • Do you think the 68 trillion Android devices running today will one day collectively attain self-awareness?
  • Not unless Google can update'em all in one push?
    Andoird is an API-all-OEM-can-tamper OS, update is outta Google's reach.
    Even if Google can push updates to 68t Android devices, drivers...
  • Windows 10 doesn't compare with mobile Operating System. But if you still want to know, go to statcounter, it's very detailed.
  • 6 of those in my household. My PC, wife's PC, lounge room PC, my SP5, wife's SL2, mum's Surface 3.
  • Impressive! While using W10 since Day 1 at home at work we're still on W7. This year we'll finally migrate to W10 and W2K16. The day can't come soon enough even though W7 still runs fine, but it just feels so outdated in comparison.
  • Absolute number are sometime hard to comprehend. I tend to believe stats collected by web clients to understand OS usage share as can be seen in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems. If you look at web clients' OS family statistics from StatCounter as of Sep 2018, Android is 40.9%, Windows is 36.2%, iOS is 13.5%, macOS is 6%, Linux is 0.8%. If you look at just desktop OSs, Windows is 81.8%, macOS is 13.5%, Linux is 1.7%, and Chrome OS is 1.1%. What happened from about 2010 to now is that the share of Windows has dropped dramatically and has shifted to Android and iOS (mostly Android). More stuff is happening on small form factor devices. To the point where it has surpassed desktop. Microsoft needs a small form factor OS (e.g. WCOS) to compete against Android and iOS. They say WCOS is suppose to compete against Chrome OS, but the stats don't really show Chrome OS as being anything worth competing against. Windows needs to compete against Android and iOS.
  • Microsoft would have a consumer ready HoloLens by the time Android can make it to compete with Windows. See, a mobile OS not always need a mobile PHONE device.
  • That's true. They need a small, light-weight OS to compete with mobile platforms and they need to invest real money into getting UWP and PWA apps on their platforms. They don't seem to understand that there is a big market for people don't need a desktop or laptop replacement. They need a consumption device they can do a little bit more on than iOS and Android
  • “Yusef Mehdi also says that Windows 10 has the highest satisfaction rate of any version of Windows ever” Yusef is quite the comedian.
  • Yeah but the great Surface and software company for some reason did not think to come out with an Echo Show or Portal competitor, and they still can't figure out how to get the apps, so someone can build a mainstream, Windows consumption device. Whatever happened to the talk last year of them having a Chromecast like device or more iOT devices coming out?