On October 10, Microsoft announced that more than 110 million devices were running Windows 10, at roughly 2 months from the official launch of the new operating system.
Eight million of those devices were reportedly business PCs. While one could argue over numbers that come directly from Microsoft, another survey was conducted by IT firm Spiceworks, a week ago, which looked at anonymous data, and aggregated usage statistics, with the objective of getting unbiased numbers about Windows 10’s adoption rate in enterprise.
According to Spiceworks data, Windows 10 is now running on 11% of business devices worldwide. This percentage is about twice as much as what analysts previously estimated. While it’s unclear whether these devices were already existing within their infrastructure, and upgraded to Windows 10, or whether they were purchased brand new, the adoption rate is staggering, compared to any previous version of Microsoft Windows.
The original expectation, before Windows 10 was released, was close to 40% market penetration, however, this new data suggests a much higher estimated volume of upgrades within the next 12 months.
We must remember that this data takes into consideration the Enterprise edition of Microsoft Windows 10, which is not eligible for free upgrades. This takes the free upgrade option out of the question as a motivator of such high rate of adoption among businesses.
The breakdown of the data shown by Spiceworks also shows that 35% of respondents from surveyed businesses would consider upgrading to Microsoft Windows 10 within the first year of release, while 33% said they would be interested in upgrading within 24 months. 5% of those businesses are actually upgrading now, or have upgraded already. This means that within two years, 73% of those businesses will be running Windows 10 within their infrastructure.
International trends
Interestingly enough, US businesses have responded at a much higher rate than in the rest of the world, with adoption rates for Windows 10, 13% higher than in Europe, the Middle East and the African continent, a 27% higher rate than Latin America, and a 41% lead on Asian countries.
Another interesting trend shows mid-sized businesses worldwide, with 500 or more employees, have taken the lead, over smaller entities with 50 employees or less. A drilldown of the numbers show upgrade rates up to 5.3% of companies with 50 employees or less, at least within a two weeks span. Adoption rates for Windows 10 begin to rise for companies between 50 and 100 employees, at 10.9%, progressively peaking at 22.8%, for companies with 500 to 1000 employees.
Business categories
The final data point revealed by Spiceworks, shows a drill down by industry, with the Software category, not surprisingly, leading at 19.2%, followed by:
- Manufacturing at 14.4%,
- Government (13%)
- Construction (12.7%)
- Energy (12.6%)
- Insurance, Retail and Environment all at 11.8%,
- and finally Engineering, at 11.7%
Windows 10 Vs. Windows 8, Vs. Windows 7.
Previous statistics have shown that Windows 8 and Windows 7 took respectively six months each, to reach 100 million Enterprise activations, which officially makes Windows 10 the Windows operating system with the fastest adoption rate.