Windows 10 means business with impressive growth spurt

As ever, as a new month begins, new figures emerge on the market share of the various versions of Windows, and another dollop of stats has been revealed which shows how Microsoft's latest OS is progressing.

These figures are drawn from visitors to US government websites – as highlighted by the Register – and they show that in March, Windows 10 accelerated nicely and now holds a 21.82% market share.

Of course, that's still a long way behind Windows 7 which is on 61.3%. However, Windows 8/8.1 is now a distant third totalling 11.92%, barely half of the market share which Windows 10 now commands.

From January to February, Windows 10 gained 1.76%, and from February to last month, the desktop OS picked up 2.43%, a considerable increase in terms of growth rate.

That matches up with the findings of NetMarketShare, which saw Windows 10 growth upped by a third in March compared to the previous month. Although that bean counting firm pegs Windows 10 with a smaller 14.15% share of the overall desktop OS market.

StatCounter also observed a similar burst of growth now putting Windows 10 on a 16.53% share.

Down to business

Anyway, back to the US government figures which aside from the overall share and growth spurt of Windows 10 show another interesting thing: business adoption of Redmond's OS would appear to be growing.

These particular figures break traffic down daily so we can see the levels of usage during the week and at the weekend, and the good news for Microsoft in the business arena is that weekday use – meaning during the working day, at organisations across the US – has gained over 5% during the past quarter.

And that growth has come on quite markedly in the last month. Previously, indications have pointed to home user adoption far outstripping businesses – which isn't surprising, as upgrading to a new OS is a far more convoluted and complicated matter for companies.

However, it would seem that more businesses are now taking the plunge, having worked out their upgrade plans.

• Also check out: Should you upgrade to Windows 10?