It's been five months since Microsoft released the Windows 10 May 2019 Update (1903) to most of its customers. In that period, 56.6% of all Windows 10 users have upgraded to that version of the operating system (OS), according to research AdDuplex shared today.
AdDuplex's main business is promoting Windows apps, and its research is based on a survey of about 90,000 Windows 10 PCs.
After Windows 10 May 2019 Update, the next most popular version of Windows 10, according to the report, is the Windows 10 October 2018 Update (1809), which is used by 25% of systems surveyed.
Here's the remaining 18% in descending order: the April 2018 Update, Fall Creators Update and then the Creators Update and older. (With another 0.5% using Preview Builds, too.)
That means the vast majority of systems running Windows 10 are using a version of the OS released within the last year. This might not seem that impressive, especially since Microsoft releases these updates at no cost to existing users, but it's good for the entire PC ecosystem. These updates often fix security vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit in previous versions of Windows.
It's also notable because of Windows 10's enormity. Microsoft revealed in September that more than 900 million devices rely on Windows 10. There are 7.7 billion people on the planet, so unless a bunch of them have a dozen PCs, that means a significant amount of Earth's population is using Windows 10. And that percentage will only rise when Microsoft officially ends support for Windows 7 in a few months.
But it's not all good news. Recent updates to Windows 10 have introduced many problems, from issues with the Start menu to high CPU usage, over the last few months. Microsoft also delayed the major Windows 10 update planned for the second half of 2019 from October to November just days after saying it would ship as scheduled. These problems could lead to people delaying updates in the future.
For now, however, it seems that many Windows 10 users are relatively quick to install the most recent version of the OS. Let's just hope the reliability of these updates starts to improve sooner than later.
