Microsoft EVP Yusuf Mehdi said in a blog post last week that Windows powers over a billion active devices globally. This might sound like a healthy number, but according to ZDNET, the Microsoft annual report for 2022 said that more than 1.4 billion devices were running Windows 10 or 11. Given that these documents contain material information and have allegedly been pored over by the tech giant’s lawyers, we can safely assume that Windows’ user base has been quietly shrinking in the past three years, shedding around 400 million users.
No source for the blog post. Here it is: windows blog
Note that the number has been updated, and at the bottom they state that that figure has been updated.
The original text said ‘over a billion’. 1.4 billion is over a billion.
Yeah, this is just terrible journalism.
I love how they went into so much detail about why the old numbers would be accurate, then proceed to say they can ‘safely’ say that windows has lost 400 million users over a sentence on a blog stating windows has ‘over a billion users’.
Also quite disappointing that no one is questioning, “where did they go”. If Chromebooks or Apple picked up a fraction of the “lost” users, they’d be shouting from the rooftops. And a fraction of those users would crush most Linux distros infrastructure, so we’d have heard something.
What Linux infrastructure? The wikis and torrent links?
Fwiw, I’ve switched 2 computers in my house to Linux. Still researching to find out if I can switch my z13 tablet and keep all the functionality.
Speaking from a university perspective - we’ve been scaling back our computer labs a fair bit, as there’s a lot of people with personal laptops and tablets now. Almost half our former workstations are now eliminated or BYOD.
So a lot of Windows machines are just gone.
I happy to believe that its probably trending down, overall PC shipments have been trending down for a while, but 400m drop over 3 years is a huge amount that just doesnt smell right.
A lab computer is used by up to N students typically, so by removing it, there is potentially N more devices being purchased by the N students. So that could mean more iPads or Chromebooks, or even more PCs overall.
And converting a university device to a byod device doesn’t necessarily remove a PC either, given the user may purchase a new device for work.
With any statistics to back it up (which none of us have, especially not the original article) all we have is speculation.