4 Weeks in, 75 million installs

Windows 10 is now 4 weeks old, and Yusef Mehdi (Microsoft Corporate Vice President for the Windows and Devices Group) has revealed it has been installed 75 million times on over 90,000 unique PC/Tablet configurations (I wonder how many configurations Apple needs to support).

That’s a pretty strong start, and with many users who reserved still not being updated the figure looks set to continue rising rapidly for a little while yet.

I wonder how many new devices have been sold with Windows 10 pre-installed. I’ve had a look and don’t recall seeing any in the retail spaces I’ve visited, but to be honest I wasn’t really looking for the OS versions. Once these devices start appearing we may see further uptake, but this will be far below the number of people taking advantage of the free upgrade I would imagine.

It will be interesting to see what the numbers are in 4 weeks time.

Possibly just as interesting, it seems six times as many apps are being downloaded from the Windows Store per PC than under Windows 8.1 usage*. That bodes well for getting further apps to be ported and written for the platform. If many of these are UWP applications then perhaps the app gap on Windows Mobile may finally shrink a little.

Hey, a guy can dream!

* of course, many people didn’t use the store in Windows 8, so this could be a bit misleading. Either way, it’s still encouraging.

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Developing for Android…

So with the exciting times ahead now that Windows 10 has released with all its UWP goodness, I’ll be concentrating on getting up to speed with this as a priority, no?

Erm… well I was, but unfortunately I also have to pay the bills. As a result I’m buried in the second edition of The Big Nerd Ranch’s “Android Programming” book for work and hoping to get onto an Android project at some point (unless anyone else wants to make me an offer?)

I’ve done a (very) little Android programming before, and I have plenty of experience in Java, so this book can seem a little simple at times, but it’s probably what I need. So far I’m quite enjoying working through it.

Whilst I’d rather be concentrating on UWP right now, I think it’s healthy to have an understanding in Android too (that’s why I also work in both C# and Java). If iOS could be programmed in Java or C# (yes – I know about Xamarin, but it is very expensive to use if you fund it yourself) I’d be all over that too, but I think picking up iOS and either Objective C or Swift would be spreading myself too thinly right now.

So I’ll just restrict myself to the 81.1% + 2.9% of devices for now.

Futuregazing…

IDC also forecast that Google’s Android platform, which will own 81.1 percent of the smartphone space in 2015, will retain the same share through 2019. Apple’s iOS share is expected to end 2015 at 15.6 percent, but ultimately fall to 14.2 percent in 2019 as Microsoft’s Windows platform steals some share and rises from 2.6 percent this year to 3.6 percent in 2019.

With this in mind, why do so many people believe Apple are still the number one player?

Partially that’s because Apple make more money out of smartphones than anyone else, and partly because per user more apps are sold on iOS.

Android is still the biggest Market for eyeballs though, and that’s worth remembering.

For what it’s worth, If I weren’t into app development with a Java history I’d be more tempted to get an iPhone than an Android device.

Then again I don’t own either as I’m still captivated by Windows Phone, and more recently Mobile 10. I find the figure of 3.6% by 2019 likely, but two things come into play here which I think get overlooked:

1. Despite the FUD, Windows 10 looks set to be adopted in the enterprise, unlike Windows 8.x. That offers a lot of potential for the Universal Windows App strategy.
2. … Which in turn may end up pushing addition of Windows Mobile.

Is the game over for Windows on the phone? I don’t know, ask Nokia and their Symbian partners, Blackberry or Palm. Of course the Market is more mature now so its a different ball game, but history has a habit of repeating itself. Who saw tablets becoming such a hit after Microsoft’s failed attempts?

The post PC world was also a certainty too, but look what has happened there. The tablet market is shrinking as devices become more mature, and now the growth area is 2 in 1 devices like the Surface and the many alternatives.

This is partially good news for Microsoft (but also for Android and other players), which in turn could also drive Windows 10 adoption, etc.

But increasingly the OS is becoming less important… isn’t it?

Possibly for many situations, especially as services become cross platform or cloud hosted. But just like Windows Phone which is brilliant until the app you need isn’t available, there are always exceptions that make the OS as relevant now as ever.