Published by Steve Litchfield at 16:29 UTC, July 21st 2016

Perhaps responding to criticism from me about their ad-based stats always being skewed heavily towards budget phones and users, AdDuplex's latest batch of slides includes one that directly shows stats for 'enthusiasts', in this case gleaned from the usage of the company's AppRaisin discovery tool . Unsurprisingly, the stats are the complete, polar opposite to those derived from ad-display (e.g. in games), but they match far better AAWP and the tech community. Which is why my headline reads like the inverse of the reporting of these stats on other sites. The question mark in the headline referes to the uncertainty in knowing the conversion ratio from 8.1 to W10M for users of the likes of the Lumia 640 and 640 XL - I'm presuming that most of these will have upgraded by now (it has been three months since the Microsoft notifications), but that's a personal choice for each user. Hence the question mark!

Here's the new, AppRaisin-derived data:





Here's the source page, in case you want to view the other slides, based on in-app ad display.

Now look at the devices mentioned - 9 of the top 10 used by 'enthusiasts' (think really active users of the ecosystem) are fully compatible with Windows 10 Mobile and all the latest UWP goodness. In fact, a proportion of the 19.6% 'other' devices are also compatible. At worst case (ignoring the 1520 and ignoring 'other'), we still have 75% of active devices in this 'view' either running Windows 10 Mobile or presumably about to upgrade when the user gets round to it. (They've had three months since Microsoft started telling people that the upgrade was ready.)

Maybe I'm making too much of this - but I wanted to put a market in the sand that takes the opposite stance to most other reporting web sites!

AdDuplex is right to point out, in its other slides, that there are huge numbers of users of low end and older Windows Phone 8.1 devices - tens of millions at least. probably in the hands of teenagers and the extremely undemanding. But these have very little influence on the ongoing Windows 'mobile' story* and neither should they. In my opinion.

* For the most part, they're using three to four year old phones and won't ever be able to upgrade to Windows 10 Mobile.

Comments welcome.