Microsoft warns the free Windows 10 upgrade will end soon

Microsoft says that 300 million devices now run Windows 10. And if yours isn’t among them, time is running out.


On Thursday, Microsoft began showing potential customers of Windows 10 the carrot as well as the stick, touting Windows 10’s success but also warning that the free upgrade offer would expire in a couple of months. If consumers don’t upgrade their PCs from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 by July 29, Microsoft will charge $119 for a copy of Windows 10 Home when they eventually do.
First, however, Microsoft demonstrated the extent to which Windows 10 had already progressed. Windows 10 is now on 300 million active devices, according to Microsoft; Microsoft said in its April earnings call that Windows 10 was on 270 million devices, and in January executives said it was on “over 200 million devices.” The goal, according to Microsoft, is to have over 1 billion devices—phones, tablets, PCs, servers and embedded products—actively using Windows 10 on a monthly basis, Microsoft has said.

“If you’ve already upgraded to Windows 10 –- thank you. If you haven’t upgraded yet –- we hope you’ll consider upgrading today,” Yusuf Mehdi, the corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Windows and Devices Group, said in a blog post.

Why this matters: Expect Microsoft to sound the drums of doom as we near that July deadline—both in the press as well as the PC. If you multiply the 300 million devices by $119, you get a whopping figure of over $35 billion—a very poor estimate, but the magnitude of the fees Microsoft would have charged for the upgrade. (Far fewer would have paid to upgrade than those 300 million device owners, but still.) Like the robocalls from candidates seeking your money, expect Microsoft to ping your older PC to upgrade now, before it’s too late.