Windows 11 still barely pulling ahead of 10 despite end-of-support push

Windows 11 has not significantly widened its market share lead over Windows 10, despite support for many versions of the latter ending almost two months ago.

According to Statcounter, as of November 2025, Windows 11 accounted for 53.7 percent of the Windows desktop market, while Windows 10 stood at 42.7 percent. This represents a narrowing gap between the two, rather than the widening expected by Microsoft and the PC OEMs.

However, it is worth remembering that Statcounter's figures represent only a comparatively small subset of websites (around 1.5 million) and combine data from consumer and business devices.

The Register spoke to Lansweeper principal technical evangelist Esben Dochy, who noted that consumers were more likely to have devices that couldn't be upgraded or follow the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule when it comes to change. He also pointed out consumers in the EU get Microsoft Extended Security Updates (ESU) for free.

For businesses, though, it's different. Dochy told us: "The primary blocker is slow change management processes. These can be slow due to bad planning, lack of resources, difficulty in execution (in highly distributed organizations) etc.

"The ESU are used to be secure while those change management processes take place, but organizations will have to pay to get those ESU making it more expensive for unprepared or inefficient organizations."

Kieren Jessop, a research manager at Omdia (formerly Canalys), told us the picture presented by Statcounter was "genuine, but complex."

"When consumers purchase a new Windows 11 PC, they frequently retain their old Windows 10 machine as a secondary device - repurposed for children's homework, as a kitchen PC, or for basic tasks. These machines continue generating web traffic and appearing in usage statistics even at lower intensity.

"This means the Windows 11 adoption curve represents net additions rather than pure replacements, tempering the rate of Windows 10 decline without reflecting actual purchasing behavior or the installed base composition of primary devices."

According to Jessop, the business world is different. Enterprises still on Windows 10 are using the ESU program as a strategic bridge rather than alternative. ESU have become a standard tool in biz PC migration planning "rather than an edge case," he explained.

Organizations are using ESU selectively - "covering mission-critical systems with application dependencies, specialized hardware where Windows 11 drivers don't exist, and segments where refresh budgets haven't been allocated yet. It's strategic triage rather than a wholesale decision to remain on Windows 10 indefinitely.

"Companies are buying time for specific portions of their fleet while executing staged migrations for everything else. For large enterprises, the per-device ESU cost is often substantially lower than the disruption costs of a migration - compatibility testing, deployment planning, user retraining, and potential productivity loss during rollout. When you factor in that many organizations would need to purchase new hardware anyway, spreading that capital expenditure across normal refresh cycles makes more financial sense than a crash program to meet an arbitrary deadline."

The challenge facing Windows 11 is that, other than the end of free support for many versions, there is no must-have feature to make enterprises break a hardware refresh cycle, particularly in a difficult economic environment.

Microsoft has not released official statistics on Windows 11 adoption. However, hardware vendors have noted the sluggish pace of transition. Dell COO Jeffrey Clarke commented during an analyst call:

"If you were to look at it relative to the previous OS end of support, we are 10-12 points behind at that point with Windows 11 than we were with the previous generation." ®