Windows 10 Is Still Popular, While Windows 11 Market Share Remains Below One-Quarter Mark
Windows 10 Is Still Popular, While Windows 11 Market Share Remains Below One-Quarter Mark
We’re two years into Windows 11’s launch since late 2021, and how does the market share looking like for Microsoft’s various operating systems? It won’t be exactly good news for Microsoft as the share for Windows 11 remained vastly lower than the venerable Windows 10, each taking 23.61% and a huge 71.64% share respectively.
Per StatCounter, the chart has recorded market share of various operating systems from Microsoft. Aside from the aforementioned entries, Windows 7 sits third at just 3.34%, while Windows 8 (and 8.1) combined only gets less than 1% in total (0.61% for W8.1, and 0.35% for W8). The 22-years-old Windows XP meanwhile still remained in 0.34% of active systems today. The adoption rate of the latest Windows has been markedly slow when compared to its predecessor – at the same 2-year timeframe, Windows 10 has already achieved 32.84%, or nearly 10% more than Windows 11 does today.
It’s not difficult to see why – Windows 11’s TPM 2.0 requirements has fenced older systems, as recent as first generation AMD Ryzen, from officially supporting it; and the redesigned interface, while modern, has invited criticism due to vastly limited customization available to Start Menu and Taskbar (myself included) – the latter of which has previously retained features as far back as Windows 95, such as app labels (Windows 7 switched to icons first by default, but the option remained available; Windows 11 instead has removed it entirely). You also can’t move the Taskbar from the bottom part of the screen with the latest Windows.
Windows 10 still has two years to go in terms of extended security updates support, which is set to end on October 14, 2025. It remains to be seen if Windows 11’s adoption rate may finally pick up beyond that date, or that Windows 12 may be a thing – should that happens, Windows 11 likely will be the regarded as the “bad” part of the Windows OS cycle that seemingly remained accurate for the past two decades.
Source: Tom’s Hardware
Pokdepinion: I for one am not a fan of Windows 11’s changes, and even with AI and DirectStorage – it’s not going to convince me to make the switch for the productivity penalty it’ll incur to my workflow.
