San Francisco, Sep 4 (IANS): More than 50 per cent of all PCs are now running Microsoft's latest Windows 10 operating system (OS), which comes after over four years of its release.

Windows 10 adoption started out very strong but naturally slowed as the months progressed. Microsoft was aiming for 1 billion devices running Windows 10 in two to three years but backpedalled on that goal, the VentureBeat recently reported quoting data from Net Applications.

The operating system was installed on over 75 million PCs in its first four weeks and passed 110 million devices after 10 weeks. 

Windows 10 OS had 48.86 per cent market share in July and gained 2.13 percentage points to hit 50.99 per cent in August. However, growth has been slow ever since the Windows 10 free upgrade expired in July 2016.

Windows 8 OS stayed flat at 0.63 per cent while Windows 8.1 lost 0.91 points to 4.20 per cent. Together, they owned 4.83 per cent market share at the end of August.

Meanwhile, Windows 7 fell 1.49 percentage points, from 31.83 per cent to 30.34 per cent. Microsoft is slated to end support for Windows 7 in January 2020.

Windows Vista stayed flat at 0.15 per cent whereas Windows XP slipped 0.11 points to 1.57 per cent.