There is no denying that Windows 11 is not a perfect operating system, but despite flaws, it continues to increase its user base. In fact, Windows 11 is currently experiencing pretty fast growth, according to Statcounter. The latest data shows that Windows 11 is getting close to a 32% market share in the desktop market.
Statcounter reports that in August 2024, Windows 11 reached a new all-time high of 31.63%, which is an increase of 0.8 points over the previous month. Year-over-year growth is 8.46 points (it was at 23.17% in August 2023). This is still pretty far away from Windows 10, which has twice the users of its successor.
In August 2024, Windows 10 lost 0.85 points and reached 64.14% (-7.8 points year-over-year change). Other and now unsupported Windows versions remain relatively unchanged. Windows 7 has 3.05%, Windows 8.1 has 0.41%, and Windows XP, believe it or not, is still in use on 0.4% of systems connected to the internet, which is quite a lot of users, considering that Windows powers almost 1.5 billion computers.
- Windows 10 - 64.14% (-0.85 points)
- Windows 11 - 31.63% (+0.80 points)
- Windows 7 - 3.05% (+0.10 point)
- Windows 8.1 - 0.41% (-0.01 point)
- Windows XP - 0.4% (+0.02 points)
Microsoft is expected to expedite Windows 11"s adoption rate as we approach the end of Windows 10"s support in October 2025. However, given that many Windows 10 users cannot upgrade to Windows 11 due to incompatible hardware, it will be interesting to see how much time it will take for Windows 11 to dethrone the current king. It is quite possible that an unsupported version will soon be Microsoft"s most popular desktop operating system.
Keep in mind that Statcounter"s data is not 100% accurate. Check out this article to learn more about how Statcounter prepares its monthly reports.