Microsoft Unveils Another May Surface Event & Windows 10 Usage Numbers

Most of us are just finishing taking in all the information Microsoft shared earlier this week during their big education related product announcements in New York City however, in the last 24 hours two more tidbits are now lighting up the tech blogs and everyone's curiosity.

First lets begin with a Windows 10 usage update.

The last time Microsoft provided official momentum numbers for their Windows 10 operating system was in September 2016 at their annual Ignite conference that was held in Atlanta, GA. At that time they shared that the OS was in use by over 400 million active users.

This week, in an interview with Bloomberg after the education event in NYC, Microsoft's Yusuf Mehdi revealed that Windows 10 is used by over 300 million users everyday for 3.5 hours. He also added that it continues to be the fastest adoption by corporations that the company has even seen with Windows. (Source: MSPowerUser ).

I am not sure what that translates to on a monthly basis but maybe next week at Microsoft Build in Seattle we will hear more about the operating systems momentum since last September or what this number specifically means.

Then, late last night I received an email from Microsoft asking me to save the date of 23 May because of an event being held in Shanghai, China to once again show the world what's next.

It linked to a website located at https://mseventshanghai.eventcore.com/ with very little information beyond what was already in the email.

However, thanks to a tweet from Surface chief Panos Panay we can now pretty confidently say this is a Surface hardware launch of some sort:

You might recall he basically confirmed the Surface Laptop's launch earlier this week when he appeared in New York last weekend and used the #Surface hashtag that time as well.

As for what hardware might be unveiled at this event it is either going to be the long overdue hardware refresh of the Surface Pro and Surface Book themselves or possibly brand new Surface Pro 5 and Surface Book 2 devices.  There isn't much else expected at this point.

Well unless they are going to launch a phone that is not like the phones we know today.

That thought opriginates from a comment Microsoft's Satya Nadella made this past week on the Make Me Smart podcast as reported by Liam Tung over at ZD Net:

"In some sense, when you say, 'Will we make more phones?' I'm sure we will make more phones, but they won't look like phones that are there today."

Then, on top of that, another prominent voice at Microsoft, Alex Kipman the mind behind the companies HoloLens device, gave this quote to Bloomberg:

“The phone is already dead,” he says. “People just haven’t realized.”

Now for a company that has been silent about the trajectory of their Windows 10 Mobile product line, to have the CEO and another senior executive come out in the same week and make specific reference to smart phones like this is another one of those things that is to convenient to just be a coincidence.

Remember back in April, when we learned Joe Belfiore was back on the job with his Mashable interview and then the education event invites went out to the media the next day? I said then that was just too many things to be a coincidence and I think this might just be too coincidental as well.

I guess we need to keep watching the information around this upcoming event in late May and at Build next week to see if we get any other indications that something more than a Surface refresh or updates to Surface Pro and Surface Book are on the agenda.

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