Microsoft has hit a wall with Windows 10 adoption

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The latest figures on Windows 10 adoption show that Microsoft’s operating system has once again failed to make any headway over the last month.

Figures from Netmarketshare showed that the percentage of users on Windows 10 stood at 22.59% for the month of October, which was a tiny increase of 0.06% compared to the previous month where it was 22.53%.

And indeed, in the month before that, August, the OS was on 22.99%, meaning it has actually dropped 0.4% since the summer. It would seem, then, that the end of the free upgrade offer has certainly had an impact on adoption, even if it didn’t in August (which actually saw a 1.86% gain over July, even though the offer was over at that point – there are various reasons why this upwards blip could have happened).

Netmarketshare’s stats showed that Windows 7 is still the clear leader for October, sitting on 48.38% – more than double the market share of Windows 10. The older OS actually gained 0.11% this past month.

Second helping of stats 

The Register also reported the figures for StatCounter, the other major analytics firm for desktop operating systems, which showed Windows 10 was on 22.24% for October compared to 22.19% the previous month. Again, this is a tiny increase, and actually down slightly from August’s figure of 21.3%.

In other words, progress has effectively halted for the OS, at least according to these metrics. It’s quite possible that things will pick up a bit, though, as Christmas sales of PCs should kick in, with all these new models coming with Windows 10 installed (computer manufacturers can no longer install any other version of Windows on their machines as of this week, with Windows 7 Professional and 8.1 finally having been binned for OEMs).

There was some slightly brighter news with Steam’s hardware survey stats which show how gamers stand when it comes to operating systems, as Windows 10 adoption actually increased by 0.64% in October, an appreciable amount. And a much better picture than last month when the OS failed to make any gains.

Gamers have traditionally been keener to adopt Windows 10 thanks to DirectX 12 being exclusive to the platform, and 49.33% of the denizens of Steam now use the operating system – tantalizingly close to half. We can expect DX12 to continue to drive folks to the new OS, at least to some extent, particularly as fresh games emerge which use the tech.

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