Windows 10 climbs to 700 million devices en route to 1 billion goals

Just a few months before the launch of Windows 10, Microsoft's Terry Myerson, then head of the company's operating system group, made an ambitious prediction: Windows 10 would reach 1 billion devices in two or three years. A little over three years later, Windows 10 has 700 million devices, 300 million less than the original goal.

Microsoft offered the statistics update at its Ignite 2018 conference earlier this week, Neowin reports. Myerson had previously said that Windows 10 was nearing the mark of 700 million devices, making its statement in March when it announced its departure from Microsoft. The last official figure was 600 million in November of last year. This means that Windows 10 has been extended to 100 million additional devices in the last 10 months. At the current rate, it will take another two and a half years to reach 1 billion.

There is no way of knowing if the pace will stay the same, though. Many things can happen in 2-3 years. Starting in the early 2020s, for example, Microsoft will end support for 2020 and start charging businesses security updates for Windows 7. This could give a boost to the Windows 10 footprint.

It remains to be seen what impact the game will have on the Windows 10 footprint. The Microsoft DirectX 12 API is not supported on earlier versions of Windows, and if ray tracing takes off as desired by Nvidia this could further encourage players on older operating systems to upgrade. It should be noted that Microsoft DirectX Raytracing (DXR) API is an extension of DX12.

The latest figures from Steam's hardware and software monthly survey show that Windows 10 continues to progress among players. At the end of August, over 60% of Steam players were using Windows 10 64-bit, compared to about 31% of Windows 7 users (32-bit and 64-bit handsets). This represents an increase of 54% per month.

We do not believe that ray tracing has an immediate impact on these numbers. It is still too early: developers have to adopt ray tracing and we still do not know how Nvidia's GeForce RTX cards will work. Pile on high prices (compared to GTX cards), and it's probably not an overnight sensation.

Nevertheless, Nvidia and Microsoft set the stage, and it remains to be seen how AMD and even Intel, which aims to launch its first discrete GPU in 2020, will approach Ray Tracing. It is probably not whether Windows 10 will reach 1 billion devices, but when.