500M Windows 10 devices, half of 2018 goal

Nadella also told developers that some 500 million devices now run on Microsoft s latest Windows 10 operating system, creating a huge audience for their software creations. That’s an impressive growth rate year-on-year. Chances are good that if you’re running Windows 10, Microsoft has already patched your computer through its automated updated process.

Windows 10 is now running on a half-billion devices almost two years after its release, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella disclosed Wednesday during the software maker’s annual conference for applications programmers.

At first look, it appears that Microsoft will accept browsers that are packaged using the Project Centennial aka Desktop Bridge on Windows Store. That’s significant growth, to be sure, but not almost enough to account for the sizable increase Microsoft is claiming.

Reaching 1 billion devices is not an arbitrary number for Microsoft.

Microsoft’s Cortana is about to get a hand from the developer community, as it seeks to tackle Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

100 million commercial Office 365 monthly active users.

568,000 developers in 60 countries have signed up to us Microsoft artificial intelligence services.

Why this matters: Microsoft will spend three hours on Wednesday talking about all of the different ways it’s bringing intelligence to the cloud: the bots framework it introduced past year, cognitive services that app developers can include, new Cortana skills, and more.

Build 2017 will undoubtedly also showcase some kind of gee-whiz demo related to the company’s groundbreaking mixed-reality headset, HoloLens, an untethered device that at present remains in the hands of developers only.

Bank on Build 2017 being used to tout Microsoft’s efforts to bite off a piece of Amazon’s booming Echo market.

New features are coming to Cortana devices like the Harman/Kardon Invoke. At Build, Microsoft is launching a new Cortana “Skills Kit,” now in public preview. Microsoft’s been slow in getting the skills API to developers, but during the keynote the Cortana Skills page went live (via @MaryJoFoley).

Some more detail on exactly what is rumoured to be among Microsoft’s plans.

Nadella and crew then provided lots of proofs-of-concept on the work that’s being done at Microsoft around AI and its Cognitive Services offerings, using the complement of developer-enabled Microsoft hardware, services and tooling. Also announced were new AI-based services, such as an expansion of Microsoft Cognitive Services (adding Bing Custom Search and Custom Vision Service, and more) as well as new features for the Microsoft Bot Framework (such as adaptive cards).