Microsoft is crushing it with its web and mobile apps, data shows

Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella's grand plan to move Microsoft away from the shrinking PC world and into the mobile-first, cloud computing, productivity world is starting to work, some data shows.

That's a world where Windows doesn't matter so much, just as long as people are using Microsoft's apps on their many other devices.

On Thursday, Microsoft will report its quarterly earnings, using a brand-new reporting structure that may (or may not) show how it's doing with this goal.

But there are other ways to measure the company's progress, such as looking at how many people used its web and mobile apps last month.

Answer: virtually everyone.

An astounding 89% of them used Microsoft's online products like Office 365 or Skype in September, according to online measuring service Verto Analytics. That adds up to some 221 million people, Verto says.

Verto analyzed the behavior of 247.7 million online adults in the US accessing internet through any device to see how many of them are using Microsoft's online services.

As you might expect, most of Microsoft's monthly traffic comes via PCs.

But a good chunk of its users are mobile-only users.

• 44.2 million (20%) of Microsoft's monthly users are mobile-only.
• On daily basis 16.7 million (11%) Microsoft users are accessing some online service or another from their mobile devices only.
• Microsoft has 90.8 million smartphone and 34.4 million tablet users.

And Microsoft's push to deliver more Mac/iOS and Android apps also appears to be working.

• People access Microsoft's online services slightly more via Microsoft's apps than they do through a browser (204 million app users versus 197.3 million browser users), Verto found.
• 57% of Microsoft's users are Apple users.
• 50% are Android users.

It's not all good news. Microsoft users spend less than 41 hours a month using Microsoft's online websites or apps on average.

That's "rather low considering the popularity of MS Office tools," says Verto's CEO Dr. Hannu Verkasalo.

On the other hand, when measuring loyalty by looking at daily users versus monthly users (known as "stickiness"), Microsoft rates high.

People seem to be using Microsoft's online products daily, most likely for work,Verkasalo concludes.

And that means that Nadella is making progress with his goal to "reinvent productivity."

Here's a look at some of the iPhone apps Microsoft makes as shown off by Satya Nadella last month.