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Microsoft: Windows 10 Has Fastest Adoption Rate

Buoyed by healthy holiday sales, Windows 10 has now reached the 200-million-device-mark, Microsoft announced on Monday.

That number is nearly double Microsoft's last-reported figure of 110 million Windows 10 licenses in late October.

According to a blog post by Microsoft Senior Vice President Yusuf Mehdi, more than 40 percent of new Windows 10 systems were activated since Black Friday six weeks ago, "representing the fastest growth trajectory of any version of Windows -- ever."

Windows 10 outpaced Windows 7 by approximately 140 percent and Windows 8 by nearly 400 percent, Mehdi said.

"We are also seeing accelerating and unprecedented demand for Windows 10 among enterprise and education customers," Mehdi wrote. "As of today, more than 76 percent of our enterprise customers are in active pilots of Windows 10, and we now have over 22 million devices running Windows 10 across enterprise and education customers."

It's not just consumers who are propelling Windows 10's growth. According to a Redmond magazine survey conducted in November, one-third of a sample of 759 readers said they have Windows 10-based systems in production, with a quarter planning to implement Windows 10 this year.

About the Author

Jeffrey Schwartz is editor of Redmond magazine and also covers cloud computing for Virtualization Review's Cloud Report. In addition, he writes the Channeling the Cloud column for Redmond Channel Partner. Follow him on Twitter @JeffreySchwartz.

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