In this report, we register the results of the first week in Fall Creators Update lifecycle and take a final snapshot of the Windows ecosystem on phones as we know it.
Fall Creators Update has been out for a week (as of this measurement), and it is already on 5.3% of PCs running Windows 10. The majority of PCs are still on Creators Update (74.6%), and a substantial number of more than 17% are running Anniversary Update.
Anecdotally, Fall Creators Update is up to a more aggressive start than its predecessor. However, we will have to reserve judgment until next month to see if this isn't just the optics of the first few days.
Another notable fact is that Anniversary Update got to over 92% in usage share by the time Creators Update was released. Creators Update got to about 75% only. Time will tell if Anniversary Update loses it's share quickly enough to keep the Windows 10 ecosystem in N + N-1 version state, as it was envisioned.
Note: we don't have the data for the initial rollout of the first update to Windows 10 (1511, also known as Threshold 2). So it's a straight line from 0 to the first data point we have on August 22nd, 2016.
Surprisingly, Surface devices weren't much ahead of the whole ecosystem when it came to the velocity of the Creators Update. The situation seems to be quite different with Fall Creators Update, with Surface Book already over the 20% mark and the new Surface Pro not far behind.
Notably, Surface Pro 3, which was an unexplained holdout in the CU cycle, is quite on par with other models in the Surface lineup this time. It seems that this time Surface Laptop is behind other models, but it's possible that due to it being one of the least popular ones our dataset isn't comprehensive enough to deliver a statistically accurate representation for the OS version breakdown on the model.
There wasn't much happening in the Windows mobile space in the previous months but provided this month marked the official admission of product's end-of-life, we decided to take one final snapshot of the landscape.
When we look at the Windows phone ecosystem as a whole, none of the devices in the top-10 are "Windows 10 native." Having said that, Lumia 650 can be found at #12 and Lumia 550 at #14.
Both Lumia 640 and 640 XL are in the global top-5, and both aren't getting the official Fall Creators Update. So, it is safe to say that none of the ten most popular Windows phones will be running the latest version of Windows 10 Mobile (at least officially).
With nothing to wait for in the Windows mobile space, users are gradually switching to other platforms. What's interesting though, is that overall OS version share numbers didn't change much since June. This probably means that the "exodus" is happening in equal parts from both Windows Phone 8.x as well as Windows 10 Mobile.
This report is based on data collected from around 5,000 Windows Store apps running AdDuplex SDK v.2 (and higher). The raw data analyzed was collected over the day of October 24th, 2017 (UTC time) unless otherwise stated.
We have made every attempt to consolidate different reported phone model names under their canonical retail model names, but it is possible that some of the rare model name variations were not accounted for.
AdDuplex is the largest cross-promotion network for Windows Store apps and games empowering developers and publishers to promote their apps for free by helping each other. AdDuplex was established in January 2011 in Vilnius, Lithuania. More than 10,000 apps actively use AdDuplex to gain more visibility and monetize their ad space.