Windows 10 passes 20% share in the U.S. Windows 10 powered 20% of the Windows devices that reached U.S. government websites this month. With about four months left in Microsoft's free upgrade offer, only the Redmond, Wash., company knows if that's enough.
Credit: Digital Analytics Program
Free upgrade offer lasts another four months; then Microsoft will have to decide whether to keep giving 10 away or call the deal doneBy Gregg Keizer Follow
Computerworld | Mar 25, 2016 1:16 PM PT
One in five Windows-powered devices steered to a host of U.S. government websites in March ran Windows 10, according to preliminary data.
For the first time, Windows 10 accounted for more than one-fifth of the visits to sites tracked by the Digital Analytics Program (DAP), which mines traffic to more than 4,000 websites on over 400 different domains maintained by U.S. government agencies, such as the Internal Revenue Service and the National Weather Service.
The bulk of the visits to DAP websites originate in the U.S.
Through Thursday, Windows 10 recorded 20.2% of visits in March by Windows PCs, smartphones and tablets. That was a one-percentage point increase from February and more than two percentage points above January's.
Although Microsoft irregularly trumpets the number of devices running Windows 10 -- the last time was nearly three months ago -- data from DAP and metrics vendors like Net Applications and StatCounter are the only publicly available sources for monitoring Windows 10 adoption.
But these external measurements are rough at best.
A case in point: Because overall traffic to DAP websites plummets on weekends -- total visits by Windows devices on Saturday and Sunday are typically less than half that of a weekday -- Windows 10 may be unrepresented, as more Windows PCs used during the work week are business machines, which predominantly run the corporate standard, Windows 7.
