Windows 10 Mobile market share remains at 14% in September

Things do not seem so encouraging for Windows 10 Mobile right now. Last month, we reported that the OS saw a 3% climb in market share and 14% userbase.

But this month’s Windows Phone market research, performed by AdDuplex, shows that Windows 10 Mobile still holds 14% of the market share despite the fact it’s been available to users for quite some time. The most popular OS is still Windows Phone 8.1, with 78% market share.

There are a couple of reasons why the adoption rate of Windows 10 Mobile is still so low, and most of them are Microsoft’s fault. First and foremost, Windows 10 Mobile is not available to all Windows Phone 8.1 devices. Actually, a lot of Windows Phone devices are unable to receive Windows 10 Mobile for one reason or another, which certainly affects Windows 10 Mobile’s share of the pie.

Another reason: Windows 10 Mobile is not available as a regular update on Windows Phone 8.1 devices. Users of compatible devices who want to upgrade their phones to Windows 10 Mobile have to use Microsoft’s Upgrade Advisor. And since not all users know about this, some of them are left unaware that they’re able to upgrade to Windows 10 Mobile.

This is not good for Microsoft and the Windows 10 Mobile platform. Because the popularity of Windows 10 Mobile devices is on the decline, we don’t know how Microsoft plans to sell more Windows 10 Mobile devices if it can’t convince existing Windows Phone users to upgrade.

The only good thing going for Windows 10 Mobile is that the majority of users running it have already upgraded to the latest version, the Anniversary Update. 82.4% of Windows 10 Mobile users are already running the Anniversary Update, which is a great adoption rate seeing as its only a month old.