back to article Windows 10 growth flattens out to 30 per cent per week

Windows 10's growth has slowed, according to StatCounter Global Stats. Last week, StatCounter opined that Windows 10 had captured 3.55 per cent of the global market for desktop operating systems. This week the firm's revised that number to 3.78 per cent for the week to August 9th and says that for the following week Windows …

  1. a_yank_lurker

    Curves

    I would expect there will be an initial surge of W10 installs lasting for a month or so on existing kit. The real numbers to watch are the retail sales of new kit for the holidays. If there is a sharp rise in demand W10 may be winner. If the trends follow the last couple of years W10 may be another market flop.

    If it is a market flop, this would indicate the traditional PC market has matured and most proprietary OS and application updates are likely to occur when kit is replaced not when new versions are released. OSes and applications are mature enough that new features are yawners at best. Trying to migrate this to SaaS is not going to appeal to many home users and they are likely to resent being "nickeled and dimed" to death.

    Also, there are no guarantees companies will actually install W10. The current spying done by W10 will make many nervous.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      I generally agree with what you say, and if Windows 1 0 had the usual price tag, I would agree completely.

      The fact that this version is "free" will have an impact on existing PCs, and the fact that today's equipment base is, on average, quite capable of handling this new version means that the consumer's usual habits will be subject to change. After all, there is no need to buy a new PC to get this OS version to run.

      Given that anyone (on Windows) not running XP can most likely upgrade his OS for free, I'm wondering what is going on. Many people are on holiday at this point, so maybe they are not able to upgrade because not at home, but I admit that I was expecting better on this first week.

      Future figures will be interesting.

      1. TheVogon

        "The fact that this version is "free" "

        It's not free. It's a free upgrade only if you already paid for a version of Windows...

    2. Arctic fox
      Headmaster

      Re ".....The current spying done by W10 will make many nervous....."

      Will it? You seem to have a very low opinion of the noble brotherhood of sysadmins. If I a mere organic chemist was turning off those settings the moment they popped up in the preview builds I am certain IT professionals will know how to do so. Companies may or may not go over to Win 10 but those who do not will take that decision for far more cogent reasons than defaults you can turn off.

    3. Chakra

      Re: Curves

      I would have been part of that part in the later months, but now I am a wait and see mode. The data collection and onerous EULA terms also makes me nervous. I have a feeling that I might just wait until a couple months before the promotion ends to install W10 just to see how it plays out. MS hasn't really been forthcoming with clarifications.

    4. TheVogon

      Re: Curves

      "Grabbing five per cent of a global market in under three weeks is no mean feat, but will just shy of five per cent of the market satisfy Microsoft?"

      Considering Microsoft are controlling the rate of the rollout we can only imagine that they are happy, or they would surely be turning the dial up? Some friends PCs that have chosen to receive Windows 10 since launch are still pending the download.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Microsoft commissioned survey?

    One wonders at the sort of wording the question must have had to get such an unprecedented upgrade rate. Windows 7 has almost five years left to run, there's little reason to upgrade to 10 at all if you're running 7.

    I think you may as well wait for Windows 11 - start planning and testing for compatibility issues when Windows 11 is released, with the goal of actually upgrading when Windows 11.1 is out, allowing a year before the 2020 deadline (which let's be honest, is going to be extended due to the massive number of Windows 7 systems that will still exist, just like XP's deadline was pushed back)

    If Windows 11 is delayed or turns out to be another Vista, Windows 10 will still be available to upgrade to, and will be in a lot better shape with several years of patching than the mess it is today.

    There is zero benefit to upgrading a Windows 7 system to Windows 10 today.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Microsoft commissioned survey?

      No, it is not a 'Microsoft commissioned survey'.

      And no, there was not a question.

      The 'statistics' are questionable though.

      1. Mark 85

        Re: Microsoft commissioned survey?

        If you go back to here: windows_xp_overtakes_81_in_december_stats the article states that they are sniffing web viewing traffic so yes, it's probably a bit imprecise, especially if one is blocking 3rd party cookies.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Microsoft commissioned survey?

        According to the article the survey where 75% of Australian businesses would upgrade to 10 within the next two years was "Microsoft comissioned[sic]."

  3. Ian Easson

    Only 30% a week?

    A new browser grows its base by *only* 30% a week (and now at 50 million users after only two weeks), and you're putting it down?

    Talk about bias!

    1. john devoy

      Re: Only 30% a week?

      Just the way the tech press works, anything MS does sucks while apple could release an iphone that sets peoples hands on fire and they would lawd it as a new hand warming system.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Only 30% a week?

        Just the way some parts of the tech press works

        There fixed it for you.

        anyways, just when was the last fawning article on Apple in these parts?

        1. Robert Grant

          Re: Only 30% a week?

          when was the last fawning article on Apple in these parts?

          Gratifyingly, it's been a while.

      2. hplasm
        Devil

        Re: Only 30% a week?

        Just the way the world works, more like. Apple has an unbreakable Reality Distortion Field, and anything MS does, sucks.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Only 30% a week?

        " while apple could release an iphone that sets peoples hands on fire and they would lawd it as a " great story :)

        They are fairly balanced when it comes to applying their tag line...

      4. Chika

        Re: Only 30% a week?

        Been around El Reg long, have you? Apple and its fanbois get as much clobbering here as anyone else.

        Some of still remember the Newton...

  4. Lostintranslation

    And what a business it is stopping this crap from installing itself.

    I had to run around 10 machines changing windows update settings, removing GWX.exe, and throwing up any other barriers I could think of.

  5. mi pen

    I tried windows 10 and went back to win 7

    I tried windows 10 twice and on both occasions it's been a crashy buggy mess. Returned back to Window's 7 I won't upgrade my OS till I need to replace my PC 3 years from now. Even then look might not bother with Window's, as Linux gaming support is improving a lot. Probably keep my old PC around for legacy gaming online. From lack of privacy, to constant bugs, I'm keeping well away from Win 10.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I tried windows 10 and went back to win 7

      Oh dear. I guess the upgrade numbers would have been 50,000,002 had you not downgraded. Microsoft will be distraught!

  6. clayusmcret

    Not surprising. The digital springbutts (I used to be one) jumped in and are finding the bugs. The rest of us will increasingly get in ~6 months down the road.

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      If you don't like it you can flip back in a few seconds.

      I upgraded a Win 8.1 tablet to see what it was all about, and it hasn't shown up any problems.

      It's all a bit dull really. No dramas to go screaming about.

  7. 404

    Thoughts

    Going from 8.1 to 10 makes sense because really, what do you have to lose? Win 8 is a mess until you put a decent startup menu on it, This machine (2015 Dell Inspiron 5447 i5 8GB touchsceeen yada yada) I writing this on has Win10 - has suffered with the initial roll out and then with damn near constant updates, gets a little better each day. I'm still not sold on it, but what can you do? Must learn this crap before I get called out for one in the wild (or worse, in an office environment). My new-to-me CF-53 will be getting Win 10 here shortly... well maybe anyway, I do need it to work/troubleshoot with it. We'll see, depends if my software tools still work properly, dunno right this minute.

    I'm telling my clients 'Not Yet' and 'Just Don't, ok?' I was vindicated at one of my larger clients by a smartass who must have installed Office at one time and considers/portrays herself an IT Pro, promptly disregarded my warnings and burned her new laptop down to the ground with the Win10 upgrade - there will be no future wildcat upgrades in that 200 employee network ;)

    Oh yes, another thing - at the house, so far out no one can hear you scream, I have satellite internet limited to 15GB throughput a month - I've spoken with their reps (4th or 5th level now) about Win10 and it's non-scheduled updates affecting download limits - I'm getting nowhere fast. Pretty sure Microsoft, in it's infinite wisdom, didn't consider the poor bastards on Excede or Hughesnet in their calculations.

    That's about all I have atm - still early here - 1st cup of coffee not completed yet.

    1. 404

      Re: Thoughts

      ok, that's new - Outlook 2013 crashes every few hours now - didn't do that a few days ago lmfao...

    2. JP19

      Re: Thoughts

      "Going from 8.1 to 10 makes sense because really, what do you have to lose?"

      I initially thought that but the difficulty/impossibility of maintaining your privacy with Win 10 and the possibility of anything you do to mitigate the downsides of Win 10 being undone by an automatic update means something I thought can't be worse than Win 8.1 actually is.

      1. 404

        Re: Thoughts

        Truth - however if you don't run it on a daily basis, you cannot suss out all the gotchas involved and I *know* I'll be dealing with it sooner than I'd like.

        That being said, my dev/gaming rigs will stay Win7 & 8.1 Pro. I simply don't have time to debug Win10 on those machines, they have to Just Work*.

        *heh, that sounds familiar, doesn't it?

  8. CFWhitman

    Where does the garden path lead?

    I have a Windows 8.1 installation on one hard drive, but I have no plans to upgrade to Windows 10 at the moment. I'm trying to see where the garden path Microsoft is trying to lead everyone down ends up. Only after I have a better idea what's going on will I consider running a Windows 10 installation. I'm not sure I ever will run 10 at home, since I already spend 99% of my home computing time in Linux (actually probably more than that). I mostly have the Windows 8.1 partition available for my brother to run certain games.

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: Where does the garden path lead?

      Spending 99% of your computer time in Linux is an interesting way to use a computer.

      I spend 99% of my time on the apps that run on top of the OS.

  9. moxberg

    Up the food chain

    Microsoft's biggest mistake was to put their developers on Win10 0:00am on the 29th of July. Now all they can do is spew out dud updates, which in turn makes customers go back to their previous Windows version or jump ship altogether. If MS devs. were allowed to revert, word would certainly spread and that'd be that for 10. Nailed it?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Last week, the decision was made at my company to focus on Office 365 for the next 12 months or so, getting legacy servers off the estate and put Office 2013 on the Windows 7 desktop. We'll deploy Windows 10 in 2017 at the same time as a h/w swap of 2500 laptops at EoL.

  11. IvoryT

    "That's 30 per cent growth in a week, a lovely result, but rather less than the 177 per cent jump in the previous week, when the OS went from 1.36 per cent to 3.78 per cent."

    Comparing percentages? But Win 10 take-up should be linear, not exponential. So 2.42% increase prev week, compared with 1.17% this week. A fall, yes, but not quite so dramatic.

  12. thomas.dahl

    Windows 10 is a big improvement on 8.1 but not on Windows 7

    I went out and bought a Surface 3 for my wife as she needed a new device. I also wanted to play with Windows 10 to see what all the fuss was about.

    Having spent 15 or so hours with the thing I have to say that I quite like the surface. But Windows 10 seems like an improved Windows 8.1 but not anything like an improvement over Windows 7. Sorry to have to say this, but I just hate the way the operating system tries to be more than an operating system. It has background tasks to carry out and should help Apps look good and work without crashing. That is all. Nothing else. Windows 8, Vista, and Windows 10 try to be more than this. Like a desperate child jumping up and down trying to get your attention all the time (or in this case, your subscription money when the real strategy comes clean).

    No, Microsoft has proven time and time again that they cannot produce an operation system that is consistently good.. And now people are willing to subscribe to 'automatic upgrades'? Makes me shiver to think that I might wake up one day and find they have resurrected Vista, or removed the start button again... Simply because they think it is a good idea.

    What scares me is that people seem to be falling for this. Hardware manufacturers too. I just conntacted Dell to order a new and shiny XPS13 only to find that I could not have it with Windows 7. Apple told me the same. The new Air and Macbooks only support Windows 8.1 or 10 in bootcamp mode now as they could not be bothered to create the drivers for the new touch pads for anything else.

    How can this be? Windows 7 is still the most popular operating system. By far. And yet nobody feels like supporting it. Surely this will affect hardware Sales, particularly as Windows 10 uptake is looking misstanke already.

    What am I to do?

    Does anyone know of a great and powerful (and expensive) ultrabook that runs Windows 7 and fitted with the new Broadwell low power shop sets? Please.. Please will someone sell me one.. I and most laptop uses...

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