Dramatic growth seen for Windows Store, powered by Windows 10 sales

This morning Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi released an impressive set of numbers for Windows 10 sales as the latest operating system has now reached 200 million installs, well on its way to the 1 billion installations the company expects in the next 2 years.

The Windows Store is one of the top selling points of Windows 10, with a completely revamped store to highlight Microsoft’s push into “universal Windows apps”, that is apps that, with little modification, can run on PC, Xbox One, and Windows 10 mobile devices including the Lumia 950 and 950 XL, and coming soon to Windows Phones previously running Windows 8.1.

The Windows Store, according to Mehdi, is gaining traction, and has already seen some 3 billion visits as more and more companies are releasing universal Windows apps. Netflix, NPR, Pandora, Shazam, and many more have joined the Store recently, and Mehdi describes an impressive set of numbers for the Store:

• 2x increase in the number of paid transactions from PC and tablet customers this holiday season.
• In December alone, 60% of paying customer were new to the Store.
• In December, Windows 10 generated more than a 4.5x increase in revenue per device, as compared to Windows 8

For developers and users alike, this dramatic increase in Windows Store usage can only be a good thing, with more apps coming online bringing more users, and more users enticing more developers to work in the Windows ecosystem.