Windows 11 is gaining share on Windows 10, but only slowly!
It's got to be a tricky situation for Microsoft's teams to manage, as well as being a little hard on the self-esteem of employees who have been toiling for months to make Windows 11 the company's number one operating system. Yet, despite the incentives, despite the updates and, above all, despite the imminent end of Windows 10 support (just over a year away, in October 2025), it's still this version of Windows that dominates the debate... and not just a little!
Windows 11/Windows 10 breakdown (August 2024) © Statcounter
Launched on July 29, 2015, Windows 10 should have been superseded long ago by its successor, Windows 11. The latter was released on June 28, 2021, and these little more than three years of existence will not have enabled it to gain the upper hand over its predecessor. Of course, the latest statistics published by Statcounter confirm that Windows 11 is progressing every month, but of all Windows versions still in circulation in August 2024, the new OS only represents 31.63% of the market, compared with 64.14% for Windows 10. For the record, 3.05% of Windows PCs still run Windows 7, but the two versions of Windows 8/8.1 don't add up to 1%.
One point of satisfaction for Microsoft, however: recent months have seen an acceleration in the adoption of Windows 11, which a year ago represented just 23.66% of all Windows PCs, while Windows 10 was still above 70%, at 71.14% to be exact. Logically, we can assume that Microsoft's policy is bearing fruit, and that the renewal of PCs in homes and businesses is enough to tip the balance in favor of Windows 10.
PC market share: Windows, OS X, Linux (August 2024) © Statcounter
Another reason for satisfaction for Microsoft: the overall shape of Windows, again according to Statcounter statistics. Although the OS has fallen back slightly over the past three months, it is now present on 71.46% of all PCs, while OS X is down to 15.48%. That's a clear drop for Apple, and a nice jump for Microsoft, since a year ago we were at 69.52% for Windows versus 20.42% for OS X. Linux now completes the podium, with 4.55% of PCs running the penguin OS and 1.73% running ChromeOS. Note that almost 7% of machines are running on an " unknown " OS for Statcounter.
