Let me estimate that for you: Windows 10 by the numbers

Since October 6th, Microsoft hasn’t shared any data anymore on how many Windows 10 users are out there. Back then it where 110 million users. And that’s massive. Prior points where 14 million on July 30 and 75 million on August 26. The 110 million-figure, while the current confirmed number, is highly outdated though. More time has past since then than since the launch of Windows 10 until that moment.

At our main page, we’re showing you a 1.000.000.000-goal progress bar, and here, I would like to explain to you guys how we count it and why it is maybe not that reliable. So, how do we count it? Well, we based it on the data we did have: the previous milestones. And that’s already where there might be a difference, within our calculations, we assumed that that 110 million figure was actually counted on October 6th (which is unlikely). The result of the calculations, based on that is that according to our estimations, there are now around 188 million Windows 10 users out there. And that’s where all the variables come in:

1. As said before, we assumed that the figure was counted on October 6th. Which is unlikely and has a negative impact on the estimated number (so the estimated number would have ended up higher if we knew the real date).
2. We only account for the Home, Pro, Enterprise and Education editions of Windows 10, so all Windows 10 Mobile devices out there running Windows 10 Mobile are not accounted for (and some figures estimate that we’re talking about 75 million Windows Phone devices of which 9% run version 10, so that would be something around 6 million additional devices) and neither does that include all Xbox Ones running Windows 10 (which again would add a couple million of devices).
3. Our figure also assumes that the market doesn’t grow between these points in time. Obviously, it does grow and thus a lot of devices are not accounted for as our figure is fixed on the amount of devices that where online on October 6th.

All 3 of these points cause our estimation to be lower than it should be. Since it is hard to predict how much, we simply do not account for all of that. So, now you guys know what we take into account for that and what not. And with all these possible corrections in mind, I’m gonna call it: yes, Microsoft is probably already beyond the 200 million. However, that’s really not what this post was supposed to be about. I just wanted to pust a couple of estimations for the coming weeks, months and years about Windows 10. So… here I go:

Windows 8.x (so 8 and 8.1 combined) had a highest market share of 20,66% on the week before the Windows 10 launch. Estimated by me, Windows 10 will reach that market share in the week of June 5th. So after 10 months of availability. In comparison, Windows 8.x need 33 months for that, Windows 7 did that in 11 months and Vista managed to get there in 25 months. By that time there will be 275 million devices running Windows 10 (again, according to the same estimations as described in the first part of the post).

In the week of July 24th (which includes July 29th (yep, that’s the estimation)), Windows 10 will reach 23.84% market share, Windows Vista’s all time high. And that’s equal to 322 million devices (again, estimated with said rules).

Wait a minute? 322 million devices, exactly 1 year after availability? And they wanted to get to 1.000 million after 3 years? 322 million times 3 years is… 966 million. So they are not going to get there?

Yes, they are, in fact, they knew they where going to get there the day they made up that figure. It’s not that hard to get to 1.000 million with upgrades and the knowledge that you’ve got at least 300 million devices sold a year. So why is this estimation off that far? Again, we don’t consider growth and left out the 75 million Windows Phone users and the 25(?) million Xbox Ones out there. Not to mention IoT-devices and the probably thousands of Surface Hub and Hololens devices. They’ll get there. No worries. Our estimations will get better and better as Microsoft announces new numbers. In fact, the next number they’ll announce will give us a really good guess at its growth now and in the future.

For Edge, we estimate that by the week of February 28th, it will have put Opera worldwide to the 6th place, placing itself on 5th, crossing the 2.4% market share. 2016 is, however, going to be an interesting year for Edge as extensions will be made available and Microsoft will release Edge 14 and 15 in this year. Here’s some good hope the adoption will speed up after version 14. At the same rate, Edge might be able to beat Safari by the end of 2016 or early 2017.

And finally, how is it going with the rollout of Threshold R2? Well… According to our estimations, 44.4% of the Windows 10 users is still using Threshold R1, while 54.7% is on Threshold R2. 0.9% is using Redstone R1, or rather, build 11082.

Windows 10 Mobile is finished, stop saying otherwise

So there is something bothering me for a couple of weeks now: the attitude of the community towards build 10586 of Windows 10 Mobile. Or rather, the lack of attitude and the very weird selective behavior about updates.

Microsoft has released multiple revisions of build 10586. For desktops these where revision O, 3, 9, 11, 14, 17, 29 and 36 while Mobile has seen only 0, 11,29 and 36 so far. And that is good. That’s – in fact – amazing. However, the Mobile community has been calling Microsoft out for releasing unfinished software. Why? Because it contains bugs.

And then I’m standing there, thinking: “of course it contains bugs, which software does not?”. The answer to that question is none. For some reason it’s fine for Google to release Android 6.0.0 and then release 6.0.1 later and for Apple to release iOS 9.0.0 and then 9.0.1 later. Yet, if Microsoft does that, then it’s bad, something that shouldn’t have happened, etc. What’s up with that?

And you know what, as Windows 10 Mobile users, we shouldn’t be the ones complaining. Except for Apples iOS, there aren’t many out there that actually receive updates in the first place. Androids update policy is non existent. Sure, Nexus-devices have been able to keep up (for maximum 2 years), but beside that? Most Android users with a high-end phone never see minor bug (and security) releases, let alone major updates, or at least not before the Android development is already 2 versions ahead. Meanwhile, the low-end Lumia 520 that is about to celebrate its 3rd anniversary and will receive Windows 10 as a present.

Sure, 10586 has some rough edges, but compared to some of Apples disastrous releases (iOS 5, 6, 7 and 8 where all plagued by some major issues), we’re getting away easily. So guys, stop calling Microsoft out on releasing updates for Windows 10 Mobile and claiming that “the previous build wasn’t ready”. This is business as usual. Think of the current build as version 10.0.3 (with 10586.0 being 10.0.0, 10586.11 as 10.0.1 and 10586.29 as 10.0.2).

Which brings us to another issue: some “news”-sites out there have been claiming that because Microsoft is still working on a new version of Windows 10 Mobile build 10586 the roll out to Windows Phone 8.x devices has been delayed. The answer to that idea is: yeah… no… we don’t know that. And might be, or it might not. Again, future revisions of 10586 are just patches like every other OS has seen. Stop freaking out about it.

Lads and gents: round 3 has begun

Todays the day! Yay! Microsoft released the first preview of the third wave of Windows Insider Preview builds. 11082 is the new build you’ll receive on the fast ring. This build isn’t that interesting through. First of all, except for under the hood changes to OneCore and VP9 support in Edge, nothing has changed that much.

What did change is that the Windows Insider Fast Ring is changing its requirements for new builds. The result is that the Fast ring will be receiving more builds more quickly. That is an interesting change, through it has to be said that Microsoft has promised to push out more builds on the Fast ring more often already, however, since this is the first time – that we know of – they actually changed the requirements, it might become true. We’ll see…

Lots of Windows is about to lose support

There is just one month left for a whole lot of pieces of software that have come out of Microsoft. On January 12, 2016, Microsoft will drop support for a couple of versions of Windows (through you might consider them all different editions). But that’s not the interesting part, because next month – next year – a lot is going to change for Internet Explorer too.

So first of all, if you’re running Windows 8, Windows RT or Windows Phone 8, you might want to upgrade to Windows 8.1, Windows RT 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 respectively. For the first and later, you might also want considering going just straight ahead an upgrade to Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile (if already available for you). Windows RT-users are left out and will have to do with the 8.1-update from 2013. (By the way, Windows Home Server 2011 will follow in April 2016.)

Anyway, a while ago, Microsoft announced that it would reconsider its support schedule for Internet Explorer, and these changes are coming into effect on January 12 too. Basically, every current version of Windows will need the latest available version of Internet Explorer for that version to continue to receive updates for the browser. That means that Internet Explorer 7 and 8 will go completely out that day (as it isn’t the latest version for any version of Windows), so both Vista , 7, 2008 and 2008 R2 will lose support with that version.

Internet Explorer 9 will drop support on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Windows Vista, Server 2008 and Home Server 2011 will be able to continue to use IE9 and receive updates until their own end of life (which – again – for Home Server is just 3 months later). Internet Explorer 10 will also drop support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Obviously, also on Windows 8, but that whole OS will be dropped that same day. The only version of Windows that will continue to use IE10 and receive updates is Windows Server 2012.

Finally, Internet Explorer 11 will… well… it won’t do anything. IE11 is the only version of Internet Explorer that isn’t affected by this change and will continue to receive support on Windows 7, 8.1, 10, Phone 8.1, Server 2012 R2 and Server 2016 for the foreseeable future. It has to be said that nothing lasts for ever, though, so in case you’re using IE11, it might be wise to upgrade to Microsoft Edge 12. Maybe you want to hold out on that until Microsoft Edge 13 or 14 as it is expected to support extentions, that’s fine, but make sure you stay save. ME12/13 are much more secure than IE11 and not a single update to IE will change that due to it’s backwards compatibility nature.