Windows 10 clocks 75m downloads in 30 days; guns for 1bn by 2017

Downloads for the Microsoft’s latest operating system, Window 10 have risen to 75 million since its launch on 29 July, the Redmond-based firm said in a media statement, adding that “numbers continuing to grow every day.”

Microsoft said Windows 10 was downloaded on 14 million machines within 24 hours of its launch, and reached a peak of 1,500 downloads per second in its first week.

For the first time since the Windows OS was first introduced 30 years ago, in 1985, the firm has rolled out Windows 10 as a free upgrade for users of the previous versions (Windows 8 and 7).

Incidentally, Windows has a dominating 90 per cent market share of the global personal computers market, was launched a year later than Apple’s Mac OS, which was introduced in 1984.

Analysts believe the new policy of doling out Windows as a free upgrade and as a service is in response to the fact that, since 2012, Windows sells less than the Android OS, which has come to dominate the world of smartphone operating systems.

In 2014, Android became the most popular OS (across all platforms), with the number of Windows devices sold last year accounting for less than 25 per cent of Android devices sold.

In the statement, Microsoft said more than 90,000 unique PCs or tablet models have been upgraded to Windows 10 in 192 countries, nearly every country on the planet.

“Even some devices manufactured in 2007 have upgraded to Windows 10,” it noted.

In addition, owners of Xbox One, its popular gaming console, have streamed nearly 122 years of gameplay to Windows 10 PCs, it noted.

Windows Store for Windows 10 has seen six times more downloads per device than Windows 8, it added.

Microsoft said it expects adoption rates to grow further, hoping to have Windows 10 installed on over 1 billion devices in the next two to three years.

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