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Windows 10 desktop

When Microsoft launched Windows ten, it appear that all existing Windows 7, viii, and 8.1 customers could receive a free upgrade to Windows 10, provided they took advantage of it within one year. So far, that strategy has paid dividends. Earlier this calendar month, Microsoft reported that more than 200 million users had upgraded to Windows 10, double the number of Windows 8 users that adopted that operating system over the aforementioned fourth dimension frame.

Data from the Register suggests that domicile users are upgrading more quickly, which makes sense — businesses and government offices deploy new operating systems more slowly. The graph below shows each operating organisation's relative market share for 3 months, ending on January 10. This information was gathered by measuring OS market place share on systems used to access Us authorities websites.

Windows market share

The regular dips are weekend periods when Windows 8.one and 10 increase, while Windows 7 decreases. Interestingly plenty, most of Windows 10 marketshare gains appear to be at the expense of Windows 8.i, non Windows 7.

Even at this relatively rapid pace, at that place volition still be millions of Windows seven and eight.one users when Microsoft's one year timer expires. Over at ZDNet, Ed Bott discusses what Microsoft might do next. The company could merely stop giving Windows x away and start charging for the privilege, it could simply extend the deadline indefinitely, or information technology could set a new deadline — say, the end-of-life deadline for Skylake systems we reported a few weeks back.

All of these are reasonable options, and I think Bott is correct when he says Microsoft probably hasn't decided what it'due south going to do, yet. The ane thing Ed doesn't mention is what additional steps Microsoft might accept to encourage users who don't currently want to upgrade.

Our coverage of Windows 10 has often touched on privacy concerns, software controls, and the mandatory telemetry logging that Microsoft implemented with its latest operating system. The mandatory characteristic updates are some other issue — security updates should be mandatory, but feature updates are a different story. Developers are vocally unhappy about the electric current state of the Windows 10 Store besides.

By next summertime, most of the people who wanted to upgrade to Windows ten volition have done so, while less-technical users who left "Recommended" updates enabled will exist upgraded whether they like it or not. The major holdouts at that point volition be enterprise and business customers on their ain refresh cycles and individual users who, for diverse reasons, don't detect Windows 10 attractive enough to switch.

Microsoft, of course, can cull any upgrade policy information technology wishes — merely if it wants to actually move customers off earlier Windows versions, information technology could do worse than to give those customers more control over certain areas of the operating arrangement.