Microsoft's Build developer conference has kicked off, and one of the company's first announcements was a new milestone for Windows 10: the operating system is being used on 500 million devices.
While it's highly unlikely that Microsoft will hit its original goal of Windows 10 on 1 billion devices by mid-2018 (the company has since backtracked on that goal), it's still an impressive milestone for an OS that launched nearly two years ago. 
The company hit 400 million in September, and since then the operating system has continued to spread and grow.
It's a milestone that the company will definitely want developers to know about. The reason? Of course, the boost to the Windows Store, especially now that the company has released the new Windows 10 S, an operating system that will only run Store apps.
Microsoft will likely try very hard at this Build to convince developers that the Windows Universal App platform is a worthwhile investment.
Besides, half a billion systems cannot be questioned.
