Why did Microsoft skip Windows 9

Microsoft has no plans on releasing Windows 9. They are going from Windows 8 (8.1) to Windows 10.

They decided to skip Windows 9 because a program may wrongly detect Windows 9 as Windows 95, Windows 98 or even Windows ME. According to Reddit user cranbourne, Microsoft decided to forgo Windows 9 on account of legacy code from third-party apps running checks for Windows 9x and the comment reads:

Microsoft dev here, the internal rumours are that early testing revealed just how many third party products that had code of the form

if(version.StartsWith("Windows 9"))

{ /* 95 and 98 */

} else {

and that this was the pragmatic solution to avoid that.

This is almost like Microsoft's version of Y2K.

The other factors that Microsoft skip Windows 9:

    • Windows 9 may seem inferior to Apple's OS 10 (OS X) since nine is lower than ten.
    • Nine may be interpreted as Windows Nein. In German, it is called Windows No!
    • Microsoft skip Windows 9 as a polite gesture to Japanese customers. In Japanese, word for the number 9 sounds like word for pain or distress. This is pronounced ku or kyū, and the kanji is 苦.
    • Microsoft wanted to distance itself as far as possible from Windows 8.
    • Microsoft Marketing thought it sounded better.
    • Microsoft is hoping to make up for tightening profits by selling super rare copies of Windows 9 on the collector's market.
    • Because 7 "ate" 9.

Then what? What's the other theories about 9?