Market share shock: Is Windows 10 actually gaining ground over Windows 11?

[Alfonso Maruccia]

Editor's take: Microsoft will end official mainstream support for Windows 10 in October, yet many users continue to stick with the old, reliable rather than upgrade to the Copilot-heavy Windows 11 experience. The OS's stubborn popularity underscores user resistance to Microsoft's push for its latest platform.

The latest Statcounter data on Windows market shares offers some surprising insight. Windows 10 is still growing in popularity while Windows 11 continues to struggle, even though the older operating system is just weeks away from losing support for most PC users.

Data from August show Windows 10 regained nearly 3 percent of its user base, rising from 42.88 percent in July to 45.53 percent market share. Meanwhile, Windows 11 fell from 53.51 percent to 49 percent of the Windows market. Even Windows 7, dating back to 2009, saw a slight rebound, climbing from 2 percent to 3.59 percent.

Statcounter says its tracking code runs on more than 1.5 million websites worldwide. The service collects data from 5.3 billion page views, including 1 billion in the US alone. That provides a substantial dataset for a reliable snapshot of how Windows users are navigating their PCs in today's internet-focused economy.

Windows 11 only surpassed Windows 10 in global market share a couple of months ago, nearly four years after launch. Its adoption has lagged due to strict hardware requirements and Microsoft's decision to cut off support for older CPUs. Many users had to either upgrade their computers or stick with Windows 10 – most chose the latter.

People aren't happy about Microsoft ending official support for Windows 10. Someone has even filed a lawsuit to keep the OS alive. Users and organizations that need a modern, supported PC platform now have few options if they want to continue using Windows 10.

Microsoft offers a paid Extended Security Updates (ESU) plan for professionals and enterprise organizations, while third-party service 0patch promises to protect the OS against critical flaws for at least five more years after October 2025. These are stopgap measures at best.

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Market share shock: Is Windows 10 actually gaining ground over Windows 11?

 

[user556]

The Steam Survey sees irregular step swings in both directions too. That's usually put down to surges in Chinese participation ... but no one has explained how come the surges happen.

 

[nnguy2]

The Steam Survey sees irregular step swings in both directions too. That's usually put down to surges in Chinese participation ... but no one has explained how come the surges happen.

That's due to sampling errors and not adjusting for it. As a statistician I've been harping on that but people don't seem to understand how survey sampling works and just take things as truth.

 

[Tech420]

The main thing that's keeping me from switching to Windows 11 is the taskbar. You can't add toolbars for quick launch icons, and can't move the taskbar to the side or top of the screen. I use toolbars in Windows 10 all the time with small icons cause it's handy and convenient. In Windows 11 you can pin things to the taskbar, but they always keep moving around to different spots. I have an OLED monitor so want to avoid burnin by moving it to different spots every now and then

Another thing is the wifi icon. You need to click that and then the arrow to get to the wifi connections, and in win10 you just needed 1 click. Stuff like that is really annoying and it seems like it's dumbed down and I feel like I'm being treated like a noob

 

[Theinsanegamer]

That's due to sampling errors and not adjusting for it. As a statistician I've been harping on that but people don't seem to understand how survey sampling works and just take things as truth.

Or people dont care about your claims of being a statistician on the internet.

 

[RudyBob]

I like Windows Win 98, 2000, Win XP and Win 7. What are ya gonna do? Write articles, what else.

 

[RudyBob]

Or people dont care about your claims of being a statistician on the internet.

Are you making an allegation?

 

[nnguy2]

Or people dont care about your claims of being a statistician on the internet.

weird that you feel insecure about me being a statistician.

 

[Starfals]

I aint moving from W10 anytime soon. Maybe in 2028, if I feel like it. MAYBE. If not, 2029+.

If games and apps stop supporting it, might be sooner tho, we willl see. Even then, I got more than enough things to do for the next 10 years.

 

[nnguy2]

Or people dont care about your claims of being a statistician on the internet.

https://imgur.com/a/LHappQg

 

[seeprime]

The main thing that's keeping me from switching to Windows 11 is the taskbar. You can't add toolbars for quick launch icons, and can't move the taskbar to the side or top of the screen. I use toolbars in Windows 10 all the time with small icons cause it's handy and convenient. In Windows 11 you can pin things to the taskbar, but they always keep moving around to different spots. I have an OLED monitor so want to avoid burnin by moving it to different spots every now and then

Another thing is the wifi icon. You need to click that and then the arrow to get to the wifi connections, and in win10 you just needed 1 click. Stuff like that is really annoying and it seems like it's dumbed down and I feel like I'm being treated like a noob

Move the W11 taskbar to the left. It'll be just like old times. Go to Taskbar behavior.

 

[user556]

That's due to sampling errors and not adjusting for it. As a statistician I've been harping on that but people don't seem to understand how survey sampling works and just take things as truth.

It's not an error. The surges are happening. If they wanted to filter it out I'm sure they could but then that's just hiding the surges.

 

[GeoffreyA]

The main thing that's keeping me from switching to Windows 11 is the taskbar. You can't add toolbars for quick launch icons, and can't move the taskbar to the side or top of the screen. I use toolbars in Windows 10 all the time with small icons cause it's handy and convenient.

Same. Apart from the ugly interface and sluggishness, the removal of Quick Launch is a no-go for me.

 

[WestleyTDPR]

Move the W11 taskbar to the left. It'll be just like old times. Go to Taskbar behavior.

You've misunderstood, they meant the left edge of the screen not the left side of the bottom of the screen, quite useful with widescreen monitors to not waste screen depth

 

[Anton Longshot]

The "Windows 11 at 50-ish percent" was nonsense anyway. Logic dictates there are MANY more machines that cannot run 11 than machines that can and do run 11.
H*** I'm aware of boxes that run XP, and quite a few that are on 7.
I refuse 11 on my boxes as it's not an OS but an advertising platform. While thát particular aspect can be fixed at the moment there's no guarantee that Microsoft won't find a way to stop that.
Will 12 if that ever comes be a proper OS again? There's no telling what MS will do - right now "the suck them dry" philosopy rules MS' actions and I don't know that leadership & shareholders will allow them to go back to being one of the Good Guys.

 

[dualkelly]

I aint moving from W10 anytime soon. Maybe in 2028, if I feel like it. MAYBE. If not, 2029+.

If games and apps stop supporting it, might be sooner tho, we willl see. Even then, I got more than enough things to do for the next 10 years.

Considering windows 11 drivers work for the most part on windows 10 just fine they are going to have a very hard time getting most people to use the absolute crap that is windows 11. Get a copy of windows 10 ltsc. Can use UnigetUI or christitus windows utility to install and keep all programs updated with out the insanely horrible windows store app that is a nightmare. And if you wish further wipe the crap of windows you can use the christitus microwin acomponent of Chris Titus Tech's WinUtil, a tool used to create customized and "debloated" (stripped of unwanted software) Windows installation ISOs. For example I got rid of windows defender (you can do this seperately with ionuttbara/windows-defender-remover on github) and updateblocker to stop windows from installing crappy updates that tend to break things.

 

[gamerk2]

That's due to sampling errors and not adjusting for it. As a statistician I've been harping on that but people don't seem to understand how survey sampling works and just take things as truth.

Yeah, the amount of samples is small enough relative to the steam install base where you're going to get swings depending on who gets sampled.

 

[seeprime]

You've misunderstood, they meant the left edge of the screen not the left side of the bottom of the screen, quite useful with widescreen monitors to not waste screen depth

Thanks. Reading is hard!

 

[mountains]

If this article is based on Statcounter info, I would guess that many of the people using W10 still are blocking tracking. So the W10 users may be even bigger. Of course, some on W10 may also be light users who are just using old hardware, so that may offset. I would guess that most NEW devices on W10 would be intentional, though. People may be installing W10 while they can in case MS does something in October to make it harder.

I say W10 LTSC for the win, with multi-boot for "other" OS's. At least for now.

 

[brunocasarini]

The main thing that's keeping me from switching to Windows 11 is the taskbar. You can't add toolbars for quick launch icons, and can't move the taskbar to the side or top of the screen. I use toolbars in Windows 10 all the time with small icons cause it's handy and convenient. In Windows 11 you can pin things to the taskbar, but they always keep moving around to different spots. I have an OLED monitor so want to avoid burnin by moving it to different spots every now and then

Another thing is the wifi icon. You need to click that and then the arrow to get to the wifi connections, and in win10 you just needed 1 click. Stuff like that is really annoying and it seems like it's dumbed down and I feel like I'm being treated like a noob

A lot of things got worse in Windows 11, but the worst is changing default apps. I just can't accept the fact that there's no easy way to change them (only web browser) like I could on Windows 10. For example, try setting VLC as the default app for videos - you have to choose the file type it should handle ONE BY ONE. Ridiculous.

 

[airbornex]

Imagine suing Microsoft just to keep Windows 10 alive — that’s either dedication or the world’s most relatable class action lawsuit.

 

[Tyler Dur Den]

The main thing that's keeping me from switching to Windows 11 is the taskbar. You can't add toolbars for quick launch icons

That is my biggest complaint with Win 11. No Quick launch bar can be enabled natively. The work around is to pin things to the taskbar, but then those icons change positions as things are opened. This makes it a very poor substitute for the quick launch bar. There are other annoyances all over the place as well.

Give me Windows 7 any day. That's all most users need.

 

[Tyler Dur Den]

I like Windows Win 98, 2000, Win XP and Win 7. What are ya gonna do? Write articles, what else.

How about an article that digs into why Microsoft is pushing OS changes and features that seem to anger large parts of the customers, and why MS doesn't seem to care?

How about an article about why Microsoft doesn't seem to be able to more fully separate the graphic look and feel of the GUI from the OS? This seems like an obvious thing to do.
I don't give a squat about the degtails of the underlying code. I only care about how I interact with the thing, and that's the GUI and an occasional powershell or command line. Why is it that the old control panel is still there, but we get pushed the new control panel? Why is it that Windows 11 keep changing, making it hard to find anything? Why is it that Windows seems to offer 2 or more screen capture apps and 3 or 4 diffeent photo/image editing apps all with randomly overlapping features? Where is the consistency? Where is the in depth study of the OneDrive EULA regarding MS slurping up those users' data for its AI?

 

[RudyBob]

How about an article that digs into why Microsoft is pushing OS changes and features that seem to anger large parts of the customers, and why MS doesn't seem to care?

They are the monopoly. They have no need to care. I just wrote your article

 

[trents]

There has always been resistance from the user base whenever M$ has introduced a new OS platform. But the strong-armed way it was done this time has generated an unprecedented amount of anger and resistance. It has turned out to be a huge corporate faux pas.