Microsoft has lost more than a quarter of its Windows user base in three years. An edifying figure that raises several questions about the future of a bone in the middle of a transition year.
While Windows 10 support will receive its end in October, Microsoft continues its seduction operation to convince its users to adopt Windows 11. Recently, the firm has praised the performance of its latest bone in a series of benchmarks necessarily to the advantage of Windows 11.
In a recent blog article on the Microsoft site, the executive vice-president Yuzuf Mehdi returned in detail to the various arguments in favor of Windows 11: Security, Productivity, Performance and of course, AI with Copilot.
But this marketing exercise actually hides a statistic that does not bode well with good Microsoft: the reduction of the Windows user base over the years.
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Windows loses ground
The statistic was noted by ZDNETwho notes that Yuzuf Mehdi declares in the blog article: ” Today, Windows is the most used operating system, with more than a billion active devices monthly« .
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If that may seem enormous (it remains substantial), it is to be highlighted with the same statistics unveiled in 2022 by Microsoft in its annual report concerning Windows. In this document, the firm then declared that it existed ” Over 1.4 billion monthly active devices running on Windows 10 or Windows 11« .
No need to be a math genius to notice that nearly 400 million aircraft is missing in the latest figures revealed by Microsoft. A fact that confirms that Windows loses well on the PC market, for reasons after quite logical.
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Windows 11 still wins (and very slowly) from the field to PC players
Covid and transition to mobile
As ZDNET recalls, after having experienced signs of decline in 2019 before bouncing with the COVID and the boom in telework due to generalized confinement. The trend will continue until 2023 with no less than 130 million PCs sold worldwide.
The market is gradually changing, both with it because of ever more harsh competition, but also with the arrival of new uses.
Apple’s market share on the PC market has been up since 2020 (+22% in 2024) and the introduction of its M1 chip. The MacBook is no longer the ceremonial of professionals and creative, but a alternative completely recommendable for the general public in the face of the many PCs under Windows.
In addition, many users have not systematically replaced their aging equipment with a new PC, while mobile alternatives (smartphones or tablets) are able to replace them on a daily basis.
However, there remains the public of professionals with infrastructure deeply linked to Windows, as well as players, who remain a faithful user base over the Windows versions.
All the challenge lies in this transition to Windows 11, which caused three cases: users wishing to stay on Windows 10, users replacing their PC to a Windows 11 compatible machine or migration to another ecosystem, mobile or not.
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