Microsoft: Nearly half of users on new Outlook.com, "majority upgraded by end of summer"

In February, Microsoft said that the new version of Outlook.com was finally out of preview, nine months after it originally announced the planned upgrade for its webmail service. The company said that it would continue to roll out the new version of the site to millions more users each week, but many users continue to report that they're still waiting to be upgraded.

Jon Orton, Director of Marketing for Outlook, shared details about Microsoft's progress on the upgrade program with ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley, explaining that the process is "more than a facelift. The scope is much bigger than the previous Hotmail-to-Outlook.com transition. It's not just the UI and experience we're migrating. We are moving data to the Office 365 base."

The complexity of the process means that different groups and types of users are being upgraded at different times. "A lot of factors go into who gets it and when," Orton said. "It depends on which features and capabilities you use. If you are sharing calendars, for example, there are special migration considerations."

So far, he added, over 175 million accounts have been migrated to the new Outlook Mail experience - that's almost half of Outlook.com's 400 million users. Orton said that Microsoft expects "the vast majority of Outlook.com users to be upgraded by the end of this summer."

Have you been upgraded to the new Outlook.com yet? And if so, what do you think of it so far? Let us know in the comments below.

Source: Mary Jo Foley (ZDNet)