Microsoft Windows 10 now active on 600 million devices

A little over two years since its official release, Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system is now reportedly running on some 600 million devices worldwide, mostly PCs, according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who announced the figure at the company's annual shareholders meeting.

The figure may sound impressive, but it actually lags far behind the software maker's initial targets, with plans to run on a billion devices by 2018. This relative disappointment can likely be chalked up to Microsoft's abandonment of Windows 10 Mobile, which failed to find a place in a market dominated by Android and iOS. In fact, the Google and Apple mobile operating systems alone account for more than 99% of the global smartphone market, according to research from Gartner.

In October 2017, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's operating systems group, Joe Belfiore, said on Twitter that Windows 10 Mobile is no longer on the agenda in Redmond, Washington: "Of course we'll continue to support the platform... bug fixes, security updates, etc. But building new features/hw aren't the focus." The most recent major Windows 10 update for PC users, the "Fall Creators Update," was released in October 2017.