Windows 10 overtakes Windows 8.1 and XP to hit new high in January
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According to NetMarketShare’s latest numbers Windows 10 has hit 11.85% share, overtaken Windows 8.1 (10.4) and Windows XP (11.42) to become the second largest desktop Operating System version in use worldwide.
Of note is that Windows 7 is down from a high of more than 60% in June 2015 to 52.47% in January 2016.
The numbers suggest that there are now around 200 million Windows 10 PCs in use, to which we can add 19 million Xbox One consoles and a few million Windows 10 Mobile phones, making the size of the ecosystem around 220 million plus devices, 5 months after the August launch of Windows 10. Microsoft hopes to reach 1 billion devices 3 years after launch, and appears to be on track with that goal.
With automatic updates and universal windows apps for all those devices Microsoft hopes to create a unified, unfragmented ecosystem which would allow Microsoft to more easily push services (where they hope to make money) and create a more competitive environment vs the other large ecosystems such as iOS and Android which can attract developers and ultimately users to all its components.
