Still fewer Windows 10 devices out there than Instagrammer Kylie Jenner has dollars

Microsoft now only 200 million short of that tricky first billion

Microsoft has confirmed that the company is still quite some way shy of its first billion Windows 10 users.

Corporate vice president Yusuf Mehdi made the admission via Twitter, announcing the company had inflicted Windows 10 on 800 million devices.

Thank you to all our customers and partners for helping us achieve 800 million #Windows10 devices and the highest customer satisfaction in the history of Windows. https://t.co/G3CRdkFoPT pic.twitter.com/je9kvBvYhj

— Yusuf Mehdi (@yusuf_i_mehdi) March 7, 2019

It's a far cry from the billion expected at launch. Of course, in those halcyon times Microsoft still had a mobile phone platform so could have been forgiven for expecting to breeze past that goal.

Some observers regarded the target as "far from ambitious".

The news was greeted with mutual backslapping on social media, although a cynic might suggest some embarrassed shuffling of shoes and staring at the floor would have been more appropriate. Particularly when one also considers the quality issues that have beset Windows 10 over the last year.

Totally thought you wrote BOOM instead of 800M. Either way it works, though 😁 pic.twitter.com/Iwo0tdDjci

— Jen Gentleman 🌺 (@JenMsft) March 7, 2019

With the end of Windows 7 support approaching, that figure (which also includes the likes of Xboxes) should creep further upwards. In March 2018, the outgoing Windows boss, Terry Myerson, stated that the company had almost hit the 700 million mark, a figure confirmed at last year's Ignite event in the last week of September.

Mehdi also remarked that the OS had "the highest customer satisfaction in the history of Windows", something that will be of great comfort to those currently having to uninstall the latest update to Windows 10 October 2018 Update (aka 1809), which was unleashed on 1 March.

It seems the update, KB4482887, causes "performance degradation with desktop gaming when playing certain games". Judging by the howling of gamers, that degradation has been pretty catastrophic.

Better buy an Xbox. Every activation counts, after all. ®