Windows 10 Is Only Making Windows Fragmentation Worse

With Windows 10, Microsoft wanted to get every Windows user on the same platform. Now, the opposite is happening. Just 6.6% of Windows 10 PCs have the October 2018 Update over three months after its release.

The Numbers

These numbers come courtesy of AdDuplex, which tracks Windows update market share, as spotted by Bleeping Computer. In December 2018:

6.6% of Windows 10 PCs were running the October 2018 Update
83.6% were running the April 2018 Update
5.7% were running the Fall Creators Update
1.8% were running the Creators Update
1.4% were running the Anniversary Update
0.5% were running the November Update
0.3% were running the original Windows 10

In theory, the October 2018 Update is “widely available.” In practice, Microsoft isn’t confident enough to roll it out to the vast majority of Windows 10 PCs. There are still several “upgrade blocks” in place for various issues, including problems with specific Intel display drivers and older AMD Radeon GPUs.

Aside from the slow upgrade to the October 2018 Update, a whopping 9.7% of Windows 10 users are still using older versions than the April 2018 Update. At least this isn’t as bad as Android’s fragmentation problem.

Get Ready For Another Update in Three Months!

Windows 10 is on a six-month release cycle. That means the next release, codenamed 19H1, is happening in about three months. But Microsoft has only upgraded a small percentage of PCs to the current software.

So what will happen? Is Microsoft going to quickly rush out this update to more PCs over the next few months? Will Microsoft skip the October 2018 Update and upgrade everyone straight to 19H1? If so, how do we know people won’t encounter the same problems?

Perhaps Microsoft should admit the Windows development process isn’t working and rushing out a big update every six months is a bad idea. No one else does that—not Google with Android and not Apple with iOS or macOS, all of which receive one major update per year.