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.

  • @brucethemoose
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    411 day ago

    What… How is that even possible? Are new machines being sold with 10 instead of 11?

    • @ilinamorato
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      23 hours ago

      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.

      • @kippinitreal
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        1 day ago

        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.

        • @ilinamorato
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          523 hours ago

          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.

          • @[email protected]
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            320 hours ago

            They’re cheaper, and they seem to have been pushed heavily to kids in school though loaner laptops. Some decent percentage of new college students already know how to use ChromeOS and they’re broke college students…

            Apple kinda did something similar when I was a kid, they gave a bunch of iMacs to my elementary school, and because they came from families that could afford it, they just kept using Apple products.

            • @ilinamorato
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              117 hours ago

              Yep. I work in the edtech industry, actually, and ChromeOS has something like an 80% market share. It’s an incredibly dominant platform in K12.

      • @brucethemoose
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        101 day ago

        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.

      • @[email protected]
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        71 day ago

        I don’t think many people are changing OSs on their laptops, but you may be right about them ditching laptops altogether. 15 years everybody had a computer, now many people just get by with a phone.

        • mesamune
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          23 hours ago

          Yeah I bet people are just getting by with a phone. There’s an entire generation that uses phones for 95% of their computer needs.

          I’m using a phone app right now haha.

        • @ilinamorato
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          23 hours ago

          Yeah, probably the switches that are making any meaningful impact to the statistics are Windows 11 users buying a Mac (edit: or a Chromebook). I don’t doubt that there is a higher than usual number of Windows users switching to Linux because of Microsoft’s latest nonsense, but you’re right that it’s probably not the biggest part of this stat.

    • @[email protected]
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      623 hours ago

      Yes, there are Win 10 machines still being sold, and because they aren’t eligible to upgrade to 11, they’re dirt cheap. I suspect this is the main driver behind Win 10 growing market share.

      • @brucethemoose
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        523 hours ago

        Again, this is awesome but probably not the main factor, as most people dont know how to install an OS.

        • @LifeInMultipleChoice
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          23 hours ago

          Step one is to run format C,

          Then shits broke and the automatic repair likely won’t be able to make heads or tails of it, doubt sfc or dism will help to much… so they will open Google on their phone and realize they should have created a recovery drive before formatting the C drive.

          But now they know!

          • @brucethemoose
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            23 hours ago

            I mean, if you even have to go into the bios or dip into the mechanics of drive letters and formatting, you have already lost most people.

            • @LifeInMultipleChoice
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              423 hours ago

              Im just tired of driving 50 miles each way to work again. If I can get more people to fuck up their computers locally maybe I can start a local job 🤷