Despite Microsoft’s push to get customers onto Windows 11, growth in the market share of the software giant’s latest operating system has stalled, while Windows 10 has made modest gains, according to fresh figures from Statcounter.
This is not the news Microsoft wanted to hear. After half a year of growth, the line for Windows 11 global desktop market share has taken a slight downturn, according to the website usage monitor, going from 35.6 percent in October to 34.9 percent in November. Windows 10, on the other hand, managed to grow its share of that market by just under a percentage point to 61.8 percent.
The dip in usage comes just as Microsoft has been forcing full-screen ads onto the machines of customers running Windows 10 to encourage them to upgrade. The stats also revealed a small drop in the market share of its Edge browser, despite relentlessly plugging the application in the operating system.
My guess is either people are downgrading, or enough people are dropping Windows entirely after previously using Windows 11 (whether by switching to Mac or Linux, or by deciding that they don’t need laptops at all and can get by with just an iPad or something) to affect the percentages.
Edit: oh, also Chromebooks. I bet it’s a lot of people switching to ChromeOS.
I’d love if it were Linux but its probably macs, mostly due to their superior battery life (compared to Windows).
Anecdotally my parents bit the bullet switched to Macs after using Windows 11 and all its unnecessary changes from 10. It was death by a thoudand cuts for them, where simple processes like search and printers are radically different than before. If they gotta learn a new system, might as well learn something that works.
I literally just remembered that ChromeOS is a thing. I bet a big chunk is people seeing that they’re cheaper and deciding to switch to those. So, in a way, it kind of is Linux.
Ah… Yeah, I’d wager the bulk is going to phones and tablets, and that should be extremely telling for anyone at Microsoft trying to enshittify 11.