As you’ll have seen earlier, according to figures from NetMarketShare, Windows 10 overtook Windows 8.1 in January, taking just six months to do so. StatCounter, which also measures operating system usage, shows Windows 10 achieving the same feat in that month, although its figures are slightly different.
To mark this achievement it seems only right to compare Windows 10’s growth with that of past Windows releases to see how the new OS is really doing.
StatCounter found that in January, Windows 10’s global desktop usage hit 13.7 percent, compared to 11.7 percent for Windows 8.1 (NetMarketShare has the figures as 11.85 percent and 10.40 percent, respectively).
Breaking that down by territory, StatCounter has Windows 10 on 15.7 percent in the US (Windows 8.1 has 11.19 percent), and a whopping 22.4 percent in the UK (where Windows 8.1 has 12.5 percent).
Globally, the new operating system’s rate of growth is significantly above that of Windows 8, which had just 5 percent share six calendar months after release, and compares very similarly to that of Windows 7 which was on 13.5 percent at the initial half year stage.
You can see a breakdown of the three operating systems in table form:
| Windows 10 (Jan 2016) | Windows 8 (April 2013) | Windows 7 (April 2010) | |
| Worldwide | 13.7% | 5.0% | 13.5% |
| US | 15.7% | 5.8% | 14.7% |
| UK | 22.4% | 6.6% | 15.2% |
Obviously, while Windows 10 is clearly faring better than both previous operating systems, it’s important to remember that not only is the new OS free for Windows 7 and 8.1 users, but upgrading to it has been made incredibly easy and only requires a few mouse clicks. It’s also being pushed far more aggressively than any previous Windows operating system.
You can draw your own conclusions from that, but clearly Microsoft’s tactics are working. The software giant has a stated aim of getting the new OS on one billion devices within 2-3 years, and it’s not unfeasible to see it hitting half a billion in its first full year.
Photo credit: Robert Kneschke / Shutterstock