ITProPortal reports that Net Applications’ October usage figures indicate Windows 10 now commands 7.94 percent of the market. It is now believed to have over 120 million users, but Microsoft hasn’t given another official number since its October 6 devices launch when it announced 110 million installs have been made.
Three months since launch, growth appears to be rapidly slowing. Windows 10’s market share only increased by 1.31 percent during October, down from 1.42 percent in September. With just 7.94 percent overall share, the new operating system significantly trails the 14-year old Windows XP which still accounts for 11.68 percent of users.
At the top of the charts remains Windows 7 with a giant 55.71 percent. The popular but aging version has seen a 5 percent decline in usage since the launch of Windows 10 but still commands the majority of the market. Windows 8.1 maintains its 10.68 percent share and, interestingly, has seen fewer users moving away to Windows 10 than from Windows 7, despite the upgrade path being easier.
Although growth is slowing generally across the billions of PC users, there are some communities in which Windows 10 is much more popular than others. Members of the PC gaming community are, broadly speaking, likely to be more tech savvy and willing to upgrade than general consumers and 28 percent of Steam users now use the operating system.
Month-on-month growth has also declined here though; in September, Windows 10’s share increased by 8 percent to 25 percent but only grew another 3 percent during October. As with the global figures, Windows 7 also takes the top of the charts on Steam with 47 percent of users still relying on the six-year old OS.
Microsoft is coming up with new ways of persuading more users to upgrade to Windows 10. From next year, it will be reclassifying the upgrade as “recommended” and more aggressively pushing users to move away from Windows 7 and 8.1. Changes to the install process and wording of the various notification prompts will make it easier to migrate to the new OS but will also make it increasingly harder to avoid the pressure to upgrade.
Microsoft wants 1 billion people to be using Windows 10 by 2017 and currently has 14 months left to achieve its goal. Later this month, the company will be launching the first major feature update for the OS before the key “Redstone” release comes along next summer.
