Microsoft's sometimes-aggressive data collection policies received criticism, but if AdDuplex's Windows 10 Fall Creators Update adoption figures are accurate, the software giant might be doing something constructive with all the ones and zeroes gleaned from customer PCs. The "cross-promotion network for Windows Phone and Windows applications" reports that 85% of all PCs running Windows 10 have upgraded to the Fall Creators Update, which started rolling out to customer machines at the end of October. For comparison's sake, the previous Creators Update had reached about 66% of Windows 10 devices at the four-month mark, accoridng to AdDuplex.
The April 2017 release of the Creators Update had its share of issues, most notably an incompatibility with devices based on Intel's Clover Trail Atom SoCs. All in all, Microsoft didn't make the Creators Update available to all client PCs until four months after the April 11 initial release. The initial Windows 10 release still has 0.5% market share according to the report, but we think part of that figure could be justified by OS installs from old media.
AdDuplex goes on to report that some countries, including Canada and Germany, have crested 90% penetration for the Fall Creators Update. A few countries are closer to the 60% mark, including historical update laggards China and India.
The optimist's view is that Microsoft is learning from experience in rolling out its semi-annual OS updates and that the rumored Spring Creators Update will be the smoothest yet. Pessimists will probably just point out the Fall Creators Update's relatively meager feature improvements and say that small changes typically proceed smoother than larger overhauls. We'll keep our eye on future Windows 10 updates.