Windows 10 now powering more than 50 million business PCs

Microsoft is halfway through its target for the number of Windows 10 installations. Redmond plans on getting 1 billion active devices running Windows 10, and that’s a lot of PCs. The company has already reached 500 million active devices, which is arguably a pretty good number considering Windows 10 was only released back in July 2015.

But a majority of Windows users are still running older versions of Windows — and that, of course, includes almost all businesses around the world.  As it turns out, Windows 10 is only powering more than 50 million devices in businesses worldwide, per a recently released video by Microsoft (via Petri). That’s a very small number, and that’s mostly a good thing for Microsoft. For one, these businesses will have to upgrade to Windows 10 once the extended support for Windows 7 ends in a couple of years (2020) — effectively meaning that business will start migrating to the latest and greatest version of Windows later this year or next year. That’ll definitely lead to a huge boost in the total number of devices powered by Windows 10, making it possible for Microsoft to improve Windows 10’s security more rapidly via its Windows as a Service model.

With around 85% business expected to start migrating to Windows 10 by the end of this year, Windows 10 will likely start powering a lot more PCs in businesses all around the world in a couple of month’s time. As Microsoft continues to pack for IT-focused features such as Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection into Windows 10, the OS is getting better and better with every new feature update — both in terms of features and security. It’s only a matter of time till Microsoft hits that 1 billion mark.