Windows 10 returns to 70% market share as Windows 11 continues to sink

[Daniel Sims]

The big picture: According to Statcounter's data, the penetration of Windows 11 among Windows systems worldwide has yet to crack 30 percent after two and a half years of general availability. The outlook for the OS in the Steam survey is somewhat better, having made its first significant jump in months.

Windows 11 has entered its second month of market share decline on Statcounter's global chart. The OS sank to around 25 percent adoption among Windows users while Windows 10 climbed back up to 70 percent.

Microsoft's newest OS exhibited slow but steady growth from its October 2021 launch until it peaked at 28.16 percent in February. Since then, it has slipped by around two and a half percent.

Click to enlarge

Controversial CPU requirements might be one reason behind Windows 11's sluggish performance, and the OS's next major update, coming later this year, could worsen the situation. Version 24H2 will require processors with POPCNT and SSE4.2 instructions, blocking many older CPUs.

Reports suggest that 24H2 will introduce numerous AI features, including a more advanced implementation of Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant that might employ NPUs to run tasks with reduced reliance on cloud servers. The company confirmed that 24H2 will add Wi-Fi 7 support.

Another issue that might degrade user satisfaction with Windows 11 is Microsoft's introduction of Start menu ads. A currently available optional update adds a section to the menu containing recommendations of apps from a selection of curated developers on the Microsoft Store.

However, the April 2024 Steam survey shows that Windows 11 is gaining traction on gaming PCs, where it could soon become the most popular OS. It held at 41 percent in February and March but jumped to 45 percent in April, with Windows 10 falling to 51 percent.

Although Windows 11 hasn't suffered any serious issues over the last few weeks, its predecessor hardly feels outdated, which is likely why it remains dominant. All games and most other programs still support it, but a relative handful of features (sometimes related to HDR or AI) might require Windows 11.

Microsoft ceased Windows 10 feature updates last year but will continue mainstream support for the OS until next fall. Version 21H2 of the Enterprise and Education Edition hits end-of-life status on June 11, 2024, and support for 22H2 ends on October 14, 2025. Receiving official updates afterward will require a subscription to the Long-Term Servicing Channel.

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Windows 10 returns to 70% market share as Windows 11 continues to sink

 

[Squid Surprise]

Are there “futures” in Windows OS versions?

I’d like to purchase all the available Windows 11 ones please

We have these conversations every time MS has a new OS, as people whine and complain over them while extolling the virtues of the previous one… mostly “get off my lawn” moments.

It sucks that MS has a virtual monopoly on OSes unless you are using a Mac (sorry Linux, but you don’t count despite being the best OS).

In the end though, you don’t see people whining about how they’d rather have iOS 8 on their iPhone…

Windows XP isn’t making a comeback… in a few years, we’ll see a thread with people saying how much they hate Windows 13 - and how they love Windows 11 better…

 

[Uncle Al]

You would think MicroSludge's marketing experts would see the handwriting on the wall. Why not take version 10, add a few simple features and call it Windows 12? Sounds like a winning application, no?

 

[yRaz]

Are there “futures” in Windows OS versions?

I’d like to purchase all the available Windows 11 ones please

We have these conversations every time MS has a new OS, as people whine and complain over them while extolling the virtues of the previous one… mostly “get off my lawn” moments.

It sucks that MS has a virtual monopoly on OSes unless you are using a Mac (sorry Linux, but you don’t count despite being the best OS).

In the end though, you don’t see people whining about how they’d rather have iOS 8 on their iPhone…

Windows XP isn’t making a comeback… in a few years, we’ll see a thread with people saying how much they hate Windows 13 - and how they love Windows 11 better…

People flocked to windows 7 and even windows 10 despite the initial frustration, but it really only took them about a year to fix many people's greviences and it to start to gain popularity.

I see a large problem with windows 11 is that windows 12 is right around the corner so many people are probably asking themselves "why bother?"

 

[fadingfool]

It is one of the least configurable windows editions. The design choices are infantile and it is not an upgrade in any meaningful sense. Performance on the same hardware is worse than it's predecessor and it continually uses more resources to get the same things done. With a "deaf to the users" attitude from Microsoft (just have a look the feedback hub's 4 highest voted request and lack of proper response from MS) I can see why people upgrade to windows 10.

 

[Anton Longshot]

Update W10 to 11? NEVER gonna happen.
And what's more, unless MS stops adding "features" no one asked for while flatly refusing to fix 11's issues I will change ecosystems as soon as 10 goes end-of-life.
I will keep 2 airgapped W10 boxes for retro gaming.

I don't like this at all as I've been on Microsoft products since an early version of MS-DOS but nothing lasts forever.

 

[emmzo]

Are there “futures” in Windows OS versions?

I’d like to purchase all the available Windows 11 ones please

We have these conversations every time MS has a new OS, as people whine and complain over them while extolling the virtues of the previous one… mostly “get off my lawn” moments.

It sucks that MS has a virtual monopoly on OSes unless you are using a Mac (sorry Linux, but you don’t count despite being the best OS).

In the end though, you don’t see people whining about how they’d rather have iOS 8 on their iPhone…

Windows XP isn’t making a comeback… in a few years, we’ll see a thread with people saying how much they hate Windows 13 - and how they love Windows 11 better…

You got it all wrong in your high horse attitude blaming customers. The fact is Windows keeps getting worse with every iteration. Ok, there`s certain improvements for newer hardware, but they come along with spying, AI crap, bloatware, ads and other intrusive practices. Yes, people will say Win11 is better if Win13 adds subscription fees.

 

[RedGuard]

"I run Arch by the way"

 

[BobHome]

Well, Windows 11 is one of the 'Every Other Versions'.
Just check the history all the way back to Windows 95.

 

[maxxcool7421]

People flocked to windows 7 and even windows 10 despite the initial frustration, but it really only took them about a year to fix many people's greviences and it to start to gain popularity.

I see a large problem with windows 11 is that windows 12 is right around the corner so many people are probably asking themselves "why bother?"

Windows 7 was near perfect on launch, hell I ran the beta as production for IT to test with and it was great .. 10 did take a few rounds of patches but it was also good once direct-x 12 got a few patches ..

win11 .. has not been great and were in 18 months of that os and it still regularly makes the news for breaking games, apps, printers, vlans etc ... 11 is ... meh .. but good news I have until late 2025 to adopt it.

 

[hwertz]

I'm a Linux user myself (Ubuntu 22.04, with a couple older systems already updated to 24.04).

I don't like Windows 11's popup weather/news thing (but that was backported to Windows 10 anyway!), ads in the start menu are stupid.

But, comparing Win10 to Win11 in a VM, Win11 boots noticeably faster and runs a tad faster. So it's not just Win10 with a bunch of junk tacked on. If I were stuck with Windows I'd probably use Windows 11.

(Well, maybe not, I don't think ANY of my hardware has a TPM in it other than maybe my notebook so would not meet the requirements. And the notebook has an Intel Xe GPU, the Mesa Gallium Intel GPU driver is so good I'd be very concerned about having lower game compatibility in Windows given what I've read about the state of the Xe/Arc drivers in Windows.. although Win10 versus Win11 wouldn't help a bit there.)

 

[user478318]

Windows 11 is the second best OS that Microsoft has ever released, closely after Windows 7, eat that haters!!

 

[Gezzer]

Are there “futures” in Windows OS versions?

I’d like to purchase all the available Windows 11 ones please

We have these conversations every time MS has a new OS, as people whine and complain over them while extolling the virtues of the previous one… mostly “get off my lawn” moments.

It sucks that MS has a virtual monopoly on OSes unless you are using a Mac (sorry Linux, but you don’t count despite being the best OS).

In the end though, you don’t see people whining about how they’d rather have iOS 8 on their iPhone…

Windows XP isn’t making a comeback… in a few years, we’ll see a thread with people saying how much they hate Windows 13 - and how they love Windows 11 better…

I hear you, but there's a very constant pattern behind all that complaining IMHO. It seems to me that M$ releases an OS version designed to fulfill their needs, it flops or just doesn't do that well. Then M$ back pedals and the next version is the last one better polished and debugged with all the glaring faults and anti-user garbage removed, rinse and repeat.

That's why there's that constant "every other version of windows sucks" complaint from users. Because it's true. Widows 11 is simply their "push their luck trying to force features on end users that they don't want or ones that simply don't work". It's like clock work. In Windows 11's case they've pushed their luck further then they normally do.

Extremely restrictive hardware requirements, ads in the start menu, and so on and so on. So they're getting the expected push back. Even more so because there's a lot of users that can't upgrade this cycle. But those that can are asking who is this version for? M$ or me, and they're answering they only way they can, not buying it. I personally feel that Win11 is going to be an albatross around Microsoft's neck. The only ones that need it to succeed are working for M$, not the majority of end users...

 

[Northy]

Holding thumbs for 12... let's hope it is the un-fkd version of 11, like 10 was of 8, and 7 was of Vista.

 

[user478318]

Holding thumbs for 12... let's hope it is the un-fkd version of 11, like 10 was of 8, and 7 was of Vista.

Sorry to break it to you bro, but 11 is un-fkd version of 10

 

[Ecurb]

Have windows 10 in a virtual box VM running one app I still need that won't run on Linux Mint. Windows also says I can't upgrade to 11, so that's that.

 

[Northy]

Sorry to break it to you bro, but 11 is un-fkd version of 10

lol... maybe if you play games and consume media, but as a sysadmin its a stinky pos.

 

[pencea]

Switched to Windows 11, and tried it for a week. Did not like the new interface, especially the start Menu, and some of the things actually requires more clicking to access compared to 10. I also tested and did a few benchmarks runs and found it offers virtually margin of error differences, so I rolled back to 10 and planned to stick with it.

 

[Beerfloat]

Narratives lead a life of their own. Vista wasn't anywhere near as bad as people made it out to be, nor was Windows 7 immediately a 100% improvement. You can live with Windows 11 just fine. There aren't a whole lot of compelling reasons to bother but eh.

 

[TE5LA]

I only use Windows 9. It's great.

 

[BSim500]

We have these conversations every time MS has a new OS, as people whine and complain over them while extolling the virtues of the previous one… mostly “get off my lawn” moments.

And every time you also see the same "useful I*iots" churning out the tired old "ur all h8ters who dislike fear of change" strawman. I benchmarked W7 vs W10 vs W11 the other day (March 2024 build on 10th Gen hardware) and whilst W10 was only 1-2% faster than W11 (and W7 vs W10 was about the same, slower in some faster in others), it was LatencyMon that was way off for W11. Highest Interrupt (lower is better) was around 182 for W7, 219 for W10 but way up at 550-800 for W11. Same with DPC. Consistently over multiple runs. Right-click menu's that were snappy to open in W7-10 were now noticeably more sluggish in W11 (because the "new" context menu hasn't replaced the old one at all, just layered on top of it with twice the amount of API calls, one of which is simply discarded if you disable it). The new W11 "Start Menu" also uses 4-5x the resources of OpenShell. Idle RAM usage dropped 300MB just renaming StartMenuExperienceHost.exe alone.

So as much as it irritates the fanboys to hear, yes there are many things that are measurably objectively worse beyond ugly UI, adverts on steroids or the usual silly "fear of change" crap that does the rounds here...

 

[CrisisDog]

I’d love to implement Windows 11 in the corporate environment, but we can’t get fresh installs to compete successfully as it is making calls back to Microsoft which are being blocked by corporate network policy. I’ve had a ticket open with Microsoft for over a week, and no real response yet on “what” is being talked to.

 

[jpvalverde85]

Like in the vista times, 11 its slow and clunky (design choices), in my laptop actually gave up on it and rolled back to 10, in the desktop I just tolerate it due to the sheer grunt of the system. Just hope they get their stuff together on 12, but the signs dont align to that hope, everything online, ads everywhere, paywalls, etc.

 

[JamesBlond]

In 33yrs of IT I have not been this happy for many years...
This is such good news, get rid of the shirt and dev up Win 10

 

[user478318]

Have windows 10 in a virtual box VM running one app I still need that won't run on Linux Mint. Windows also says I can't upgrade to 11, so that's that

Come on guys this is getting tired, use Rufus, and you have Win11 on your PC!

lol... maybe if you play games and consume media, but as a sysadmin its a stinky pos.

Quite the opposite, Windows 10 was a nightmare for any admin, as every update did a reset on all settings, and reinstalled bloatware, with windows 10 microsoft was the boss of your machine