Microsoft Says Windows 10 Running On 270 Million Devices
Microsoft revealed at its Build developer conference on Wednesday that eight months after it launched Windows 10 that the platform is being “actively used on more than 270 million devices.” That figure is up from the milestone of 200 million devices Microsoft reported at the start of 2016.
While that’s an enviable pace, Microsoft has loft goals. In April 2015, the company said it aimed to have 1 billion devices running Windows 10 by the summer of 2018, ZDNet notes.
“In the eight months since launch, Windows 10 is off to the fastest start in Windows history, with over 270 million active devices, outpacing Windows 7 in the same timeframe by 145%.” Terry Myerson, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Windows and Devices Group, said in a company blog post. “People are spending more time on Windows than ever before — over 75 billion hours — with the highest customer satisfaction of any version of Windows. We are on track to reach our ambitious goal of one billion Windows 10 devices in the next few years.”
That should be good news for developers that are creating Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps for the Windows Store, as Ars Techncia notes, giving them a growing install base to target.
Meanwhile, Microsoft says that the next major update to Windows 10 will be arriving this summer and will be dubbed the “Windows 10 Anniversary Update,” to coincide with first anniversary of the Windows 10 launch. One of the key features of the update will be Windows Ink, a new way to interact with Windows 10 via a pen or stylus.
Bryan Roper, product manager of Microsoft’s Windows Group, said that “72 percent of people still use pen and paper” and for “more than an hour a day,” according to Venturebeat.
Regarding Windows Ink, Venturebeat reports that Roper “showed off a Sticky Notes app that can recognize times and places based on natural language processing, the Maps app being able to interpret lines that you draw, and Word understanding when you cross out and highlight text. Furthermore, Roper also showed off how developers can leverage Windows Ink in their own apps with as little as two lines of code.”
