Windows 10 is now running on 400 million machines says Microsoft

But desktop market share still lags at 23 per cent

Windows 10 is now running on 400 million machines according to senior vice president Yusuf Mehdi, who made the announcement at the Ignite conference in the US city of Atlanta yesterday.

"Over the last 18 months, we've made very fast progress with getting Windows 10 broadly adopted," he said.

"[There are] security improvements we've done - there have been three releases in that time period. It's 150 per cent more than the Windows 7 adoption rate, and today I'm pleased to announce that Windows 10 is now running on over 400 million monthly active devices."

Prior to July, the operating system's market share was still less than 20 per cent, casting some doubt on Microsoft's target of "one billion machines" by the end of 2017, especially as it was being distributed for free. At that time, Windows 7 still enjoyed just over 49 per cent market share.

In fact, Netmarketshare shows little real movement on these figures, putting Windows 10's desktop market share at 23 per cent now, with Windows 7 at 47 per cent. So the announcement of 400 million users is definitely a deft bit of marketing rather than any serious change. Given the failure of Windows to make a dent in the smartphone market, reaching the billion devices target is still a major challenge, especially since Microsoft now charges for it.

Microsoft has alienated some users by the strategy of 'forced' upgrades to the new operating system which it put in place in order to meet its targets. Its lack of clarity over the users' data that it is collecting and the way it is being used has also led to privacy concerns.

Mehdi also announced that by 2017 the US Department of Defence hopes to have "four million devices" running Windows 10 "across all branches of the military".

Turning to Office 365, Mehdi revealled that the "full productivity suite" - including Office 365 Pro Plus, Exchange, SharePoint and Yammer - now has 70 million monthly active commercial users.