Windows 10 is now installed on over 700 million devices worldwide

Windows 10 Redstone 4
(Image credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft is edging ever closer towards its target of having Windows 10 on over a billion devices across the globe, and the software giant has just confirmed that the OS is now present on over 700 million pieces of hardware.

As On MSFT reports, a Microsoft executive revealed that Windows 10 has been installed on more than 700 million devices during a session at Microsoft’s Ignite 2018 conference, which is underway right now in Florida.

This isn’t a great surprise, really, given that in May of this year Microsoft announced that it was approaching the 700 million milestone. Previous to that, the company revealed that 600 million devices had been reached in November 2017, and the 500 million mark was heralded at the Build 2017 conference in May last year.

Building to a billion

Of course, originally, Microsoft wanted to get Windows 10 on a billion devices in three years post-launch, or around mid-2018, so that didn’t happen (although it fairly quickly became clear that this was an unrealistic target).

Still, hitting 700 million in just over three years isn’t a world away from the magic billion, although Microsoft isn’t making much noise about this achievement, with it flying pretty much under the radar at Ignite.

We may well hear more about the milestone come the press event scheduled for October 2, which as we’ve seen will likely feature a full reveal of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update.

This latest update could even roll out as soon as next week, according to the rumor mill, although we’ve got to say that timeframe looks rather tight indeed. At any rate, we can likely expect the October 2018 Update sooner in the month, rather than later, barring any show-stopping bugs.

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).