Windows 11 still lags far behind Windows 10 as adoption stalls

Kevin Okemwa

windows 11 laptop

In October, it’ll be 2 years since Microsoft launched Windows 11. And while the company has been making significant efforts to get more users to transition to the newer OS from Windows 10, the latter still dominates the market share, at least according to a report from Statcounter.

Per Statcounter’s report in May, Windows 10 remains at the top of the market share coming in at 71.9% followed by Windows 11 at 22.95%. The remaining percentage is split among users still running on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 8.1, and Windows XP.

Keeping this in mind, Windows 10 is slated to hit its end-of-support date on October 14, 2025. Microsoft has already stopped selling both the Pro and Home editions of the OS. Additionally, Microsoft also announced that it will no longer push feature updates to Windows 10, though security updates will still be available. Amidst all this, Microsoft continues to urge users to transition to Windows 11, where it’s been busy at work shipping updates.

Not too long ago, Microsoft switched up its the way Windows’s release schedule works. The company further added that Windows versions will start being released every three years, and current Windows versions like Windows 11, will get updated more frequently. As is the case with the Moment feature drop updates for the OS.

This year, Microsoft has already dropped two of these updates, with the first one being released in February and the latest one (Moment 3) in May, though as an optional update. However, the update should be available for everyone to download during this month’s Patch Tuesday update.

And while all these efforts are geared towards enhancing Windows 11’s user experience and ultimately getting more people to transition, Windows 10 is still ranking at the top of the market share despite its short lifespan.

In another report by Lansweeper, as of October 2021 43% of Microsoft devices still can’t run Windows 11 based on 30 million Windows devices scanned at 60,000 enterprises. The report further detailed that the main reason why people were not transitioning to Windows 11 was because of its strict hardware requirements.

via Neowin