Windows 11 market share falls despite Microsoft ad blitz

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 drop was more pronounced in Microsoft's home market of the United States. Americans are now less than keen on the IT titan's flagship operating system, at least if you judge by the figures, resulting in a fall in the US of more than 3 percent in market share, while Windows 10 grew by a similar amount.

The figures are not official – Microsoft does not release market share numbers unless it has a milestone it wants to boast about – but Statcounter calculates its statistics from logging netizens generating more than five billion page views across 1.5 million global sites, making it a reliable-ish indicator of market trends.

It therefore appears we have a little longer to wait for the much-anticipated upgrade wave to occur before Microsoft pulls the plug on support for most editions of Windows 10 in October 2025.

• Microsoft has reached $1M giveaway levels of desperation to attract users to Bing
• Windows 11 continues to creep up behind Windows 10
• Rival browsers cry foul after Microsoft Edge slips through EU gatekeeper cracks
• After 3 years, Windows 11 has more than half Windows 10's market share

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.

The problem of hardware compatibility is well documented. Windows 11 has a set of requirements that have excluded millions of Windows 10 devices from an upgrade, and the operating system contains little to encourage users to purchase something new. The Register has also heard from readers disliking the new experience to such an extent that PCs have been downgraded.

That does not, however, explain the slight decline in Windows 11 market share globally, or its sharp drop in the US, unless there has been a wholesale move away from the operating system. At the very least, a gradual increase would be expected since it is becoming difficult to purchase a new machine that is running Windows 10.

We asked Statcounter if it had made changes to how it gathers its data and performs its calculations, and will update this article should the stats-wrangler respond. ®