Windows 10 now has half a billion users
It's always good to kick off a big conference with some good news and, for Microsoft, 500 million monthly active devices for Windows 10 is the best kind of news.
Microsoft announced the milestone during the keynote address at the company's annual Build Developers Conference in Seattle.
In short, the world appears to really like Windows 10, a not-inconsequential accomplishment considering how the Windows crowd felt about its predecessor, Windows 8 (later 8.1) -- an upgrade many PC owners decided to skip.
Half a billion users are nearly double the number Microsoft announced at Build 2016. When asked to characterize Windows 10's growth as compared to previous versions of Windows, Microsoft executives said it's hard to compare. Even so, they're pleased with the adoption rate.
Microsoft also shared some other growth numbers for Office and Cortana.
The commercial version of Office 365 has 100 million monthly active users (MAUs) and Cortana has 141 MAUs. It's not clear, however, if those Cortana users are typing queries into the Cortana box in Widows 10 or actually speaking to the digital assistant. Even Microsoft previously told us that most people are still not speaking to their PCs, so we're going to go with the former.
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