Windows 10 May 2020 Update finally becomes the most-used version – but it’s too little, too late

Windows 10
(Image credit: Future)

Windows 10 May 2020 Update has finally clawed its way to become top of the rankings of the various versions of Microsoft’s desktop OS, going by the latest stats from AdDuplex.

However, the May 2020 Update only crept up a few percentage points during the month of October. AdDuplex’s latest report shows it having reached 37.7%, which is up only 4% from the 33.7% figure that the update recorded in September.

That’s not much higher in the great scheme of things, particularly when you consider that from August to September, the May 2020 Update made a sizeable jump of 9.6%. Although even then, it was still behind the curve compared to previous upgrades, as we discussed in detail last month.

Of course, during the course of this month, the October 2020 Update – the successor to the May 2020 Update – came out, and already grabbed 1.7% of the market (AdDuplex’s stats are compiled with data gathered from Microsoft Store apps, incidentally, with a sample size of over 100,000 Windows 10 PCs).

Peak usage

We can, of course, expect the pace of the rollout of the October 2020 Update to accelerate considerably throughout the remainder of the year, and the May 2020 Update has doubtless now hit its peak. And a pretty unimpressive peak compared to the historical adoption rates of Microsoft’s various updates, it has to be said.

Especially when you consider that the upgrade to the October 2020 Update is a very swift and easy one – simply flicking an enablement switch – for existing May 2020 Update users, so they will likely be upgrading in short order. And of course, those who are still on last year’s Windows 10 updates will skip straight to the October 2020 Update anyway…

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).