After 3 years, Windows 11 has more than half Windows 10's market share

Windows 11 has finally reached more than half of Windows 10's market share, with just over a year before support for Windows 10 ends.

The data, collated by Statcounter, indicates a modest acceleration in the adoption of Windows 11. At the end of September 2024, Windows 10 had a 62.79 percent market share and Windows 11 accounted for 33.37 percent.

For comparison, in September 2023, Statcounter put Windows 11 at just 23.64 percent while Windows 10 reigned supreme at 71.62 percent.

There are some unflattering comparisons to be made with how Windows 10 performed against its predecessors at the same point in its life cycle. Windows 8.1 finally dropped out of extended support on January 10, 2023. A year prior to that, Windows 10 accounted for an 81.15 percent market share compared to the 2.93 percent of Windows 8.1.

Windows 10 was also comfortably ahead of Windows 7 in terms of market share, a year before the latter's demise in January 2020. In January 2019, Windows 10 stood at 53.18 percent compared to the 35.05 percent of Windows 7.

Later this week, three years will have elapsed since the release of Windows 11. After three years, Windows 10 was already significantly ahead of Windows 8.1 and accounted for a market share of 47.25 percent compared to Windows 7's 39.06 percent.

All of which means that, despite some long overdue gains and the absence of official figures from Microsoft, Windows 11 is a long way behind where its predecessor was at the same point in its life cycle.

Windows 11 has not been the hit Microsoft and its hardware vendors hoped for. The infamous hardware compatibility requirements meant the move to Windows 11 has not been an option for many users in the same way that upgrading to Windows 10 was relatively straightforward.

The hope that users would opt to buy new hardware with the requisite CPU and Trusted Platform Module (TPM) has proven unfounded since there is little in the latest version of Windows to drive users to it. For many, Windows 10 is just fine.

The result was initially a near-static market share figure after the users who could upgrade did, before a trickle of device upgrades slowly eroded the lead of Windows 10.

However, with the end of support looming, corporate IT departments will be forced to update hardware over the next 12 months or pay Microsoft for extended security updates.

Or CIOs made even decide to reassess their existing, perfectly functional fleet of computers and decide that now is the time to consider an alternative operating system. ®