Microsoft hits its goal of 1 billion devices running Windows 10

Microsoft is revealing today that 1 billion active machines are now running Windows 10. “Today we’re delighted to announce that over one billion people have chosen Windows 10 across 200 countries resulting in more than one billion active Windows 10 devices,” says Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Modern Life and the Search & Devices Group. “We couldn’t be more grateful to our customers, partners, and employees for helping us get here.”
 
This number includes PCs, laptops, Xbox One consoles, and HoloLens devices running Microsoft’s latest operating system. It means Microsoft has now hit its original goal of a billion devices running Windows 10, albeit two years later than it originally expected. Microsoft is also revealing that it now has 17.8 million Windows Insider testers.
 
Microsoft had been planning to get Windows 10 running on a billion devices within three years of its release, but the company extended that timeline after Windows Phone failed to challenge iOS and Android. The milestone comes less than five years after the original release, and less than six months after Microsoft hit 900 million devices on Windows 10.
 
Windows 10 is now “the only operating system at the heart of over 80,000 models and configurations of different laptops and 2-in-1s from over 1,000 different manufacturers,” reveals Mehdi.
 
The new billion figure also comes just a couple of months after support ended for Windows 7. It’s clear that Windows 7 upgrades from businesses have helped Microsoft achieve a billion Windows 10 active users, and the company cited these upgrades for stronger Windows performance in its earnings back in January. These upgrades also helped push the PC market to its first year of growth since 2011 as businesses and consumers look for new machines.

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