Nearly four years after its release, Windows 11 has surpassed Windows 10 in popularity for the first time. Now that support is ending, many organisations are making the switch.
According to Statcounter, which measures the popularity of operating systems based on website visits across sites, Windows 11 has had a 52 percent market share since July, compared to 44.59 percent for Windows 10. Last month, the two were roughly equal in size, with Windows 10 being slightly more popular.
The shift is likely to happen because Windows 10 support ends in October 2025. After that time, you will no longer receive security updates unless you pay extra for them. That means that many companies want to have their migration to Windows 11 completed by then. For consumers, there is now an option to use Windows 10 safely and for free for another year
Slow upgrades not uncommon
The fact that the transition to a new version of Windows is slow is not new. In the past, the unwritten rule was that as a company, it was best to only upgrade when the operating system was a year old, or when the first Service Pack (a large package with new functions) was released. At that time, any new drivers were already more widely available and the system was generally more stable than in the first months.
Statcounter does not differentiate between consumers and business users in its figures, but it is plausible that the shift is due more to companies working on an upgrade than to individual consumers suddenly switching. After all, the latter group has been receiving regular notifications for over a year that they can upgrade to Windows 11, where you have to refuse several times to stay on Windows 10.
Although Windows is the most important operating system for computers, the importance of the OS has decreased in recent years. Last week, Data News wrote that the number of Windows PCs remains stable, but if we look at the strongly growing device market and also include mobile devices, then Microsoft now only serves a quarter of the market . In 2009, that was still 95 percent.
Windows 11’s market share will likely continue to grow in the coming months at the expense of Windows 10. What’s always interesting is how popular the old system remains after it’s no longer supported.
For example, Windows 7 (discontinued in January 2020) still accounts for 7.58 percent of the PC market today. Windows 8 and 8.1 together account for 2.36 percent. Windows XP, whose last security update dates from April 2014, still serves 0.43 percent of the market today. There is a good chance that Windows 10 will continue to appear in the figures for the next ten years.