How many PCs in the world have the .NET Framework installed?

I did a second .NET Framework features informal poll recently, and as with all .NET related polls the question comes up: How many PCs have the .NET Framework on it?

If you're a company that is considering creating a client application using .NET (not Silverlight, but the .NET Framework) you'd probably like to know if your end-user needs to install something extra to use your app.

So I started asking questions. We've said things here and there about the pervasiveness of the .NET Framework but I wanted to get the final word (at the time of this writing) and put it somewhere easy to fine.

After some digging, here's what I've got:

• Well over 90% of the PCs in the world have some version of the .NET Framework installed.
• Over 65% of Windows PCs in the world have .NET 3.5 SP1 installed.

This is a lot higher than I thought, and it's pretty cool.

The .NET Framework is smaller than you'd think (that's why I wrote SmallestDotNet). The very small .NET 4 Client Profile makes it easier (both speed and download size) to put .NET on a machine.

I think these numbers will help folks who might be considering using .NET for a client application.

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