Windows 10’s first month shows the value of free upgrades, and the challenge ahead

In its first full month on the market, Windows 10 appears to command about 5 percent of the PC market. That's not just fast: it's unprecedented. Windows 8 took about 6 months to achieve the same penetration. Even Windows 7, a much less divisive operating system than Windows 8 that was warmly welcomed and regarded as a welcome antidote to Windows Vista, took a couple of months to hit the same level of usage.

The absolute number is high, too: Microsoft announced 75 million installations last week. Windows 8's first month saw only 40 million licenses sold, again showing the relative popularity of the two operating systems.

Even the business numbers seem encouraging. Microsoft rarely breaks these out, so it's difficult to construct any true comparison, but the company told us that 1.5 million installations were of the Windows 10 Enterprise version. That's only available to Software Assurance licensees (and MSDN subscribers), and while it's still only a small proportion of the install base, it's significant. Corporate users tend to be more than a little conservative when it comes to rolling out major operating system upgrades. More than a few only completed their migrations away from Windows XP within the last year. 1.5 million users suggests that there's already meaningful corporate interest in the new operating system, which is something that Windows 8 could never really boast.