Microsoft Windows 10 is growing, but its rate of growth is slowing, suggests the latest market share data from StatCounter and Netmarketshare. Microsoft is the main player in the desktop operating system market, and the month of October brought in mixed results.
Windows 10 gaining market
Windows 10, which is the latest OS from Microsoft, accounted for of the 9% market, in October compared to 7.64% in September, according to StatCounter. Though the jump of 1.36% is nice, it is less than the jump it made from 5.38% in August to 7.64% in September.
Netmarketshare revealed similar stats. According to it, Windows 10 had a 6.63% share in September, that share increased to 7.94% in October. This increase of 1.31% is less than the 1.42% increase from August to September.
Other than Windows 10, the market share of all other versions of Windows is declining. Windows XP is losing the least market share compared to other versions. Both Netmarketshare and StatCounter assessed that people who use Windows XP to cruise the web have no plans of upgrading in the near future.
How Microsoft plans to add more users
Though the percentage of the increase is small, it does mean the addition of a few tens of millions of new users. Soon Windows 10 will run on hundreds of millions of more devices as the company releases Xbox and Windows Mobile versions.
To catch more users, Microsoft will release the first major update for the operating system– code-named Redstone — in summer 2016, according to WinBeta. Microsoft has already pushed out several incremental bumps for the OS, but this update will be much bigger than those previous ones. Much of the new functionality will center around the Continuum features – the ability to jump seamlessly between Windows devices and apps – no matter what a person is working on, says WinBeta, which cites unnamed sources.
Microsoft will bring extensions to the new Microsoft Edge Web browser as well. The list of features is not yet confirmed as the plans are at an early stage for now. Microsoft will also debut its new OS update strategy with Redstone. Instead of throwing big upgrades every few years, the tech firm now plans to send smaller updates under the Windows 10 branding.
