25

20

15
Windows 10 usage share

10 July 29 - free upgrade

deadline

0
Apr-16
Dec-15

May-16
Aug-15

Oct-15

Jan-16

Mar-16

Aug-16
Jul-15

Jun-16
Nov-15

Jul-16
Sep-15

Feb-16

For the first time since its launch on July 15 2015, Windows 10 has lost market Sep-16
share. After more than a year of constant quick gains that peaked at 22.99% out of all
surveyed computers (excluding mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets) connected to
the Internet in late July and early August 2016, it has registered a significant 0.46% drop
during September, starting a few weeks after the expiration of the free upgrade deadline on
July 29. Windows 10s adoption history was fraught with aggressive and controversial
marketing practices such as unsolicited pop-ups and forced upgrades seemingly aimed at
driving fast mass adoption in order to facilitate seamless transition to Microsofts new
Windows SAAS business model. Moreover, stats pulled from Steam, in addition to
confirming the fall in Windows 10 adoption, indicate a significant increase in the installer
base of older versions of Windows, especially Windows 7 x64 (+0.36%) and Windows
8.1(+0.08%). Therefore it is likely that after installing Windows 10 out of a necessity to
escape the disruptive solicitations to do so, now that the upgrade is paid and fully optional a
significant number of users have chosen to roll back to their previous OS versions. In any
case, such a sudden and sharp decline in usage is highly anomalous and cannot be explained
simply by the fact that the free upgrade period has expired. It remains to be seen if the trend
continues or the fault lies with the methodology employed by netmarkedtshare.com, the
company responsible for the data. While Windows 10 is currently installed on over 400
million devices (22.53% market share), a negative rate of adoption could have significant
long-term consequences regarding the viability of Microsofts new strategies.