





As we welcome 2016, I thought it only fitting to provide an update on our progress since the Windows 10 launch on July 29.

As announced yesterday, over 200 million PCs, tablets and phones across the globe are now running Windows 10, the fastest growth trajectory of any version of Windows, outpacing Windows 7 by nearly 140% and Windows 8 by nearly 400%. And, accounting for 67% of all Store downloads across PC and tablet in December.

These new Windows 10 customers are discovering and engaging with the Store at a higher rate than ever before with over 3 Billion Store visits since the Windows 10 launch. While it’s early yet, the promise of Windows 10 is beginning to pay off. Over the holiday selling season, we saw a 2x increase in the number of paid transactions from PC and tablet customers over last year. Looking at the month of December, 60% of those paying customers were new to the Store, with Windows 10 generating 4.5x more revenue per device, as compared to Windows 8.

Both the growth of Windows 10 customer base and the increase in customer engagement (both with the Store and with the apps themselves) will enable us to deliver on our promise of providing a platform where developers can find growing success. For some of you, that means finding new success on the PC, and for others, Windows 10 represents an opportunity to bring your existing code to 200 million, and growing, devices. Recently, NPR and several other partners shared some highlights of their Windows 10 results:

“Seventy percent of NPR listeners use Windows devices, and we’ve seen a 50-percent increase in their listening time just since Windows 10 came out. And that was before we upgraded our app.” Ben Schein, Product Manager at NPR

In addition, Box recently shared their positive experiences developing for the Universal Windows Platform, while providing an experience for their users, regardless of the version of Windows they might be using:

“By combining the two apps in Windows 10 as a universal Windows app, it decreased our engineering overhead, and increased our velocity for future iterations. We’re really excited about this.” Lois Wang, Senior Product Manager at Box

As we begin 2016, our focus remains unchanged. We will continue to drive Windows 10 adoption and make investments in these 5 areas to help developers be successful:

While we have much more work to do, we’ve delivered a number of new capabilities and tools since Build 2015 and the Windows 10 launch. We hope you’ll take the plunge in 2016 and update your existing apps to Windows 10 and bring that idea for a new app to the Windows platform. Happy New Year!