Serving technology enthusiasts for more than 25 years.
TechSpot is the place to go for tech advice and analysis.
In short: Windows 11 achieved 36.6 percent of the market share amongst all Windows users in December 2024, an increase of more than 2.5 percentage point over that month. Windows 11 has the highest market share in history, thanks to people switching from Windows 10, whose end-of-life is less than seven months away.
According to data from analytics platform StatCounter,Windows 10’s share of the market has steadily decreased over the last few months. It had reached a high in April 2024 when it was 69.89%. Windows 10 still remains the most popular OS version, with a 60.37 percent share of the market last month.
Windows 7 is still in the third place with a market share of 2.24 percent, while Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows XP round out the top six with market shares below 1 percent each. Windows Vista, which received a lot of criticism upon its release, and failed to attract people away from XP, even in its heyday is nowhere on the top-ten list.
The low uptake of Windows 11 is due to a number of factors. Many users have refused to upgrade because of the telemetry in Windows 11 and the large amount of ads that are displayed in-shell. Microsoft’s latest desktop operating system also requires a Trusted Platform Modul (TPM) 2.0 which many older motherboards don’t support. This leaves many willing users unable upgrade without spending a lot of money.
Microsoft has recently begun testing a new feature on Windows 10 despite its urgency to migrate Windows 10 users to Windows 11. Last month, Microsoft rolled out a calendar in the Windows 10 taskbar for Insiders on the Release Preview Channel. It’s not clear if this will make it into the stable build. If it does, it could make the calendar flyout even more user-friendly on Windows 10 than its equivalent in Windows 11.
