Windows 10 news recap: Install numbers, achievements, and more

Welcome back to another weekly Windows 10 news recap. It’s been a busy week for Microsoft, especially with the company’s Windows 10 platform. Let’s take a look back at some of the hot stories relating to Windows 10 in a special feature we call “Windows 10 news recap.”

As 2015 comes to a close, Windows 10 surpasses 200 million installs

Microsoft announced back in October that Windows 10 had surpassed 110 million installations worldwide, which for October was an impressive achievement. But that was over 3 months ago, and since 2015 is coming to a close, we thought now was probably a good time to check in on that install count. Last time I checked, 120 million was the number.

According to my contacts, Windows 10 has now been installed on over 200 million devices worldwide.

Windows 10 was released to the public exactly 5 months ago today, meaning the operating system has averaged around 40 million new installs a month. That’s pretty impressive, but when you factor in Microsoft pushing Windows 10 for free straight from the desktops of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users, it’s not all too surprising.

This video montage looks back at Microsoft’s biggest 2015 achievements

2015 has been a super busy one for Microsoft, we saw the Redmond giant finally launch Windows 10, alongside new Surface hardware and Lumia hardware. There were also a few surprises, such as HoloLens and Surface Book. Since 2015 is pretty much at a close, we thought it’d be a good time to reflect on Microsoft’s biggest announcements these past 12 months in a quick video we threw together over the holidays.

From Windows 10 being free down to Panos Panay passionately unveiling new hardware, we’ve had one hell of a year as Microsoft fans. Starting back in January, with the announcement of Cortana coming to desktops, HoloLens, and then Continuum for Phones in April. We then switch over to hardware in October, with the new Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book, alongside new Lumia devices and the Microsoft Band 2.

Windows 10 jumps to nearly 10% of the desktop operating system market share

According to new stats from Net Applications, Windows 10 now commands 9.96 percent of the desktop operating system market share for the month of December 2015. This is nearly a 1 percent jump from the previous month. Windows 10 has been generally available to the public since July of 2015.

Windows 7 continues to dominate as the top desktop operating system with a market share of 55.68 percent while Windows XP retains its second place position with a share of 10.93 percent. Windows 8.1 comes in third place with 10.30 percent, and it should come as no surprise that Windows 10 will soon take over in third place.

That’s all for this week, what was your favorite story? Let us know below.