What’s up Windows 10?
Windows 10 has been around for the last seven months. Microsoft free upgrade offer will expire in the next five months. Has the free lunch helped to accelerate the adoption of the Windows 7, Windows 8 hybrid? The answer, unfortunately, is an emphatic no.
According to Computer World, by early March, Windows 10 had been installed on 200 million devices worldwide. The Redmond software giant had targeted one billion installations by the end of the free offer. That is 20 percent of the target; all things being equal, we should have had 583 million installations by March 2016.
Three separate vendors who track operating system software market share have rated Windows 10 market penetration differently. Net Applications reported that Windows 10 market share was 13.2 percent in January 2016. In February 2016, the figure snail paced by a 1.1 points.
Stat Counter’s results are not very different from that of Net Applications; Windows 10 commanded 14.8 percent in January, did some child walk to get to 15 percent in February 2016.
DAP figures are more generous. The company determined that Windows had been running on 17.5 percent and 18.5 percent of devices in January and February 2016 respectively.
The three companies may have rated windows market share differently but they all agree that Windows 10 market share growth is falling.
It is not surprising then that Microsoft decided in February to make Windows 10 a recommended update rather than an optional installation. What that means is that Windows 10 is as critical as any security update. In ordinary language, Microsoft is ‘threatening’ people into upgrading to Windows 10 to increase its market share.
When Windows 10 free upgrade was introduced last year, there was disagreement amongst the techie community on whether those running cracked versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8 would enjoy the offer. Regrettably, the best way to answer that is by way of experimentation. I half-heartedly decided to test one version of cracked Windows 7 and another of Windows 8. Behold, they both upgraded to Windows 10 seamlessly.
Let me hasten to add a disclaimer, do not try this at home, such antics are done only for testing purposes and wiped out later so that no ‘sin’ is committed. Nonetheless, the point that I am driving home is that it is possible that the free offer legitimized illegal some copies of either Windows 7 or Windows 8. If that may be the case, why has Windows 10 failed to conquer the world?
Windows 10 has failed to heal the wounds that Windows 8 created. Windows 10 looks like Windows 8 partially downgraded to Windows 7.
The company may need to extend the offer period or start to throw in other cake-icing freebies like free space on its cloud. The Good news in that Windows 10 is currently more popular than Windows 8.
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