Windows 10 reaches 20% share of US Computers - Good news or Bad News
On March 25, an article was published by ComputerWorld where the author Mr Gregg Keizer utilized statistics captured by the Digital Analytics Program (DAP) which measures visits to US government web sites and came to the conclusion that 20% of those visits came from Windows 10 PCs here in the US during the month of March 2016 and so therefore, the Windows 10 market share here in the US is 20%.
The DAP data is provided via a US government account provided by Google Analytics. You can look at the data yourself by going to https://analytics.usa.gov/
So I decided to do some due diligence myself. Looking this morning at the last 90 days of data - here are a few more interesting statistics.
Windows machines made up 52.4% of all visits, followed by iOS at 18.8% and Android 18.2%.
Of the 52.4% of Windows machines - 10% were shown as Windows 10, Windows 7 was 32.9% and Windows 8/8.1 were 6.7%. XP was 1.6%.
Chrome lead the browser pack with nearly 43%, followed by Safari with nearly 22% and all versions of IE @ 21%.
The vast majority of visits were from desktops @ 61% followed by mobile @ 32% and tablets @ 7%.
I was a little skeptical of Mr Keizer's statement- so I did a little spot checking using the same data source. I pulled the actual data and then looked at specific dates.
For example on March 1, 2016 - there were a total of 14,248,827 visits from Windows machines of which 2,526,728 or 17.73% came from Windows 10 machines. But then on March 12 - Windows 10 machines had 1,688,845 or 30.38% of the 5,559,471 visits and finally on March 25 - Windows 10 accounted for 23.12% (2,664,342) of the 11,524,060 total Windows visits.
Bottom line is while I'm not 100% that you can extrapolate actual Windows 10 market share from the data - it's an interesting barometer.
So using Mr Keizers - 20% - I wanted to see how that looks in the US.
First off it is difficult to get an exact number of total PCs in the US. I used several sources - Statista, the Computer Industry Almanac and Pew Research Center.
Using those various sources out there I estimate the total PCs in the US to be around 325M. Applying the 20% states that approx 65M PCs in the US are running Windows 10.
As I was doing my due diligence - one fact that came to light that was very interesting in that according to the Pew Research Center - while the US had an overall market penetration of over 88% of adult households with a PC in 2012 - the number of "young adults" - 21 to 29 who own a PC has dropped over the last 5 years from 88% to 71%. The millenials have gone mobile and are probably a big reason PC sales are dropping. For all adults - PC market penetration in the US is a 73% in 2015 - so about the same as it was in 2005.
Also - according to Statista US PC shipments average somewhere around 25M units / year - over the last 5 years.
MS to my knowledge has only provided two official announcements regarding Windows 10 market penetration - the first in Oct of 2015 when they mentioned 110M PCs worldwide had updated and again in Jan when the 200M mark was reached. Back in early 2015 - MS stated that their goal was to have 1B devices running Windows 10 by 2018.
So the question is - is the 20% market share a good thing or a bad thing in terms of meeting MS's goal of 1B W10 devices by 2018.
As Mr Keizer noted it appears as though the rate of Windows 10 updates is slowing. In his article Mr Keizer also states that one of the reasons that PC sales are slowing is Windows 10.
However I think it is for a different reason...
According to Statista the average age of the US PC footprint is 4.2 years. That means that a lot of machines were purchased before Windows 8. If Statista's PC shipment data is accurate that means that maybe only 100M or so PCs have been sold in the US over the last 4 years. If I'm anywhere near accurate with my 325M total PCs number that means that potentially 70% (225M) are at least 4 years old.
I know myself that of the 5 PCs in my household - 3 are over 5 years old. However I have all running Windows 10. But I'm a geek and so I consider myself the exception - not the rule.
The one big thing that has changed so dramatically in the last 4 years is the explosion in mobile. In 2012 about 545M smartphones where sold - in 2015 that number was 1.43B - which is over 5 times the size of the PC market. In the US 45% of all adults own a tablet. In fact in 2015 Samsung alone sold more Smartphones than the entire PC industry.
My point here is that Windows 10 - has not been a catalyst driving PC sales and that in fact for many folks - they can do most everything they need with their phone or tablet - so they don't see the need to purchase a new PC.
Even in corporate America where PC refresh often was based on a 3 year cycle - many are moving to VDI and keeping their PCs much longer. Or eliminating PCs entirely and going to lite or zero clients.
Bottom line is I don't think the issue is as much as Windows 10 itself - but just that there are so many good alternative devices out there like smartphones and tablets that they are forgoing their PCs.
As I've stated in previous posts - we are in the Post PC era. Sure people will still buy PCs - most likely Ultrabooks - but there will be less and less sold. Some sites state that Android is the new Windows and looking at the facts in terms of market share, units sold, etc - it's very hard to disagree with that statement.
The DAP data is provided via a US government account provided by Google Analytics. You can look at the data yourself by going to https://analytics.usa.gov/
So I decided to do some due diligence myself. Looking this morning at the last 90 days of data - here are a few more interesting statistics.
Windows machines made up 52.4% of all visits, followed by iOS at 18.8% and Android 18.2%.
Of the 52.4% of Windows machines - 10% were shown as Windows 10, Windows 7 was 32.9% and Windows 8/8.1 were 6.7%. XP was 1.6%.
Chrome lead the browser pack with nearly 43%, followed by Safari with nearly 22% and all versions of IE @ 21%.
The vast majority of visits were from desktops @ 61% followed by mobile @ 32% and tablets @ 7%.
I was a little skeptical of Mr Keizer's statement- so I did a little spot checking using the same data source. I pulled the actual data and then looked at specific dates.
For example on March 1, 2016 - there were a total of 14,248,827 visits from Windows machines of which 2,526,728 or 17.73% came from Windows 10 machines. But then on March 12 - Windows 10 machines had 1,688,845 or 30.38% of the 5,559,471 visits and finally on March 25 - Windows 10 accounted for 23.12% (2,664,342) of the 11,524,060 total Windows visits.
Bottom line is while I'm not 100% that you can extrapolate actual Windows 10 market share from the data - it's an interesting barometer.
So using Mr Keizers - 20% - I wanted to see how that looks in the US.
Using those various sources out there I estimate the total PCs in the US to be around 325M. Applying the 20% states that approx 65M PCs in the US are running Windows 10.
As I was doing my due diligence - one fact that came to light that was very interesting in that according to the Pew Research Center - while the US had an overall market penetration of over 88% of adult households with a PC in 2012 - the number of "young adults" - 21 to 29 who own a PC has dropped over the last 5 years from 88% to 71%. The millenials have gone mobile and are probably a big reason PC sales are dropping. For all adults - PC market penetration in the US is a 73% in 2015 - so about the same as it was in 2005.
Also - according to Statista US PC shipments average somewhere around 25M units / year - over the last 5 years.
MS to my knowledge has only provided two official announcements regarding Windows 10 market penetration - the first in Oct of 2015 when they mentioned 110M PCs worldwide had updated and again in Jan when the 200M mark was reached. Back in early 2015 - MS stated that their goal was to have 1B devices running Windows 10 by 2018.
So the question is - is the 20% market share a good thing or a bad thing in terms of meeting MS's goal of 1B W10 devices by 2018.
As Mr Keizer noted it appears as though the rate of Windows 10 updates is slowing. In his article Mr Keizer also states that one of the reasons that PC sales are slowing is Windows 10.
However I think it is for a different reason...
According to Statista the average age of the US PC footprint is 4.2 years. That means that a lot of machines were purchased before Windows 8. If Statista's PC shipment data is accurate that means that maybe only 100M or so PCs have been sold in the US over the last 4 years. If I'm anywhere near accurate with my 325M total PCs number that means that potentially 70% (225M) are at least 4 years old.
I know myself that of the 5 PCs in my household - 3 are over 5 years old. However I have all running Windows 10. But I'm a geek and so I consider myself the exception - not the rule.
The one big thing that has changed so dramatically in the last 4 years is the explosion in mobile. In 2012 about 545M smartphones where sold - in 2015 that number was 1.43B - which is over 5 times the size of the PC market. In the US 45% of all adults own a tablet. In fact in 2015 Samsung alone sold more Smartphones than the entire PC industry.
My point here is that Windows 10 - has not been a catalyst driving PC sales and that in fact for many folks - they can do most everything they need with their phone or tablet - so they don't see the need to purchase a new PC.
Even in corporate America where PC refresh often was based on a 3 year cycle - many are moving to VDI and keeping their PCs much longer. Or eliminating PCs entirely and going to lite or zero clients.
Bottom line is I don't think the issue is as much as Windows 10 itself - but just that there are so many good alternative devices out there like smartphones and tablets that they are forgoing their PCs.
As I've stated in previous posts - we are in the Post PC era. Sure people will still buy PCs - most likely Ultrabooks - but there will be less and less sold. Some sites state that Android is the new Windows and looking at the facts in terms of market share, units sold, etc - it's very hard to disagree with that statement.
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