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Last year, Microsoft confidently appear that it would hitting one billion active users on Windows 10 by mid-2018, cheers to expected strong conversions for desktops and laptops, new device sales, and the (supposed) increase that Windows 10 Mobile would deliver to the company's mobile business. Desktop and laptop conversions accept been fairly brisk with the company reporting over 350 million users over the past 11 months.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's executives were counting on the Windows Mobile business to achieve that initial i billion target by mid-2018, and it'south at present clear that's not going to happen. Windows 10 Mobile is nigh dead — while the OS has its clear fans and adopters, information technology's seen well-nigh no traction from other companies and Microsoft close down almost all of the Nokia personnel and assets that information technology bought from the Finnish company several years ago.

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Over at ZDNet, Mary Jo Foley reports that while Microsoft may still bring a Surface Phone to market place, it'southward virtually certainly going to exist a business-focused device to highlight Continuum and Microsoft's other innovations in merging the PC and phone. If it can practise that well, Continuum could become a major enterprise feature, in much the same way that great email in one case defined BlackBerry. That visitor's afterward pass up illustrated exactly how relying on a scattering of killer features can impale your visitor as the marketplace evolves and adapts to new technologies.

The total statement from Yusuf Mehdi is as follows:

Windows 10 is off to the hottest showtime in history with over 350 million monthly active devices, with record client satisfaction and appointment. We're pleased with our progress to appointment, just due to the focusing of our phone hardware business, it will take longer than FY18 for u.s. to attain our goal of one billion monthly active devices. In the year ahead, we are excited near usage growth coming from commercial deployments and new devices – and increasing customer delight with Windows.

Overall, Microsoft's experiment with rolling out Windows 10 to a huge number of devices for costless has been a success. The question is whether or not that success was worth the cost to either the larger PC market, which experienced no OS-launch bump and is now in worse shape than ever, or to the goodwill Microsoft created with its customers and trampled on thereafter by aggressively pushing Windows x upgrades. When the visitor set an ambitius goal to reach a billion devices past 2022, some of these pushes made at least marginal sense. At present that information technology'southward acknowledged it'southward not going to brand them, one has to wonder: What was the point of all the shoving?

Gamers, at least, take shifted to Windows 10 in significant numbers. That OS is at present the near frequent advent on Steam'south Hardware Survey, at 42.94% of the market. Windows 7 64-bit is side by side, at 30.61%, with Windows 8.ane 64-bit at x.07%.