While this is pretty good on paper, Windows 10 only passed Windows 7 in January, and it seems to have taken forever to get these sorts of numbers.

Windows 10 adoption started strong but naturally slowed as the months progressed. Microsoft wanted a billion devices running Windows 10 in two to three years but never made it

The operating system was installed on over 75 million PCs in its first four weeks and passed 110 million devices after ten weeks. Growth was fairly steady afterwards: 200 million in under six months, 270 million after eight months, 300 million after nine months, 350 million after 11 months, and 400 million after 14 months. 500 million after 21 months, 600 million after 28 months, 700 million after 38 months, and 800 million after 44 months.

Windows 10 had 48.86 per cent market share in July and gained 2.13 percentage points to hit 50.99 per cent in August. Growth has been slow ever since the Windows 10 free upgrade expired in July 2016.

Windows 8 is stuck on 0.63 per cent of machines, and Windows 8.1 lost 0.91 points to 4.20 per cent. This means the Windows 8 generation has 4.83 per cent of the market at the end of August. The duo’s peak was 16.45 per cent back in May 2015.

Windows 7 dropped 1.49 percentage points, falling to 30.34 per cent. Microsoft is ending support for Windows 7 on January 14, 2020. Hundreds of millions of users have just four months to get off Windows 7.

Windows Vista is still alive at 0.15 per cent as is Windows XP slipped 0.11 points to 1.57 per cent.

Windows overall slipped 0.56 percentage points to 87.89 per cent in August. macOS gained 0.70 points to 9.68 per cent while Linux slipped 0.38 points to 1.72 per cent as it turned out that 2019 was not the year of the Linux desktop.