- Windows 11 finally exceeded Windows 10 for market share
- 52% of those who use Microsoft’s office operating systems are now on Windows 11
- It is a heavy swing of almost 10% of Windows 10
Finally, Windows 11 is present on more PC in the world than Windows 10, at least according to a set of figures from an analysis company.
Statcounter has provided new statistics for July which show that Windows 11 has accelerated to represent 52% of all Windows versions worldwide, leaving Windows 10 in its wake on 44.59%.
This is a whole change compared to the previous month when Windows 10 remained just out of 48.76% with Windows 11 of 47.98%. Thus, Windows 11 was not far from a complete percentage point behind in June, but is now at the top of 7.4%, a swing of almost 10%.
Could this be the start of a massive exodus of Windows 10 pillars fleeing for the banks of Windows 11? Well, this cannot be excluded, and it is clear that the time is short with regard to the imminent deadline for the end of the management of Windows 10, which is October 2025 – which is only three months old now.
However, I am not convinced that there will be a jostling of migratory, because even if I have supported in the past that you should upgrade to Windows 11 early – assuming that you can (due to the specifications of your PC) – there is no longer the same sense of urgency on this subject.
Why not? Let’s review this afterwards.
Analysis: Support and scraphs
Something has changed with the extended Windows 10 support program recently for consumers, and it is worth summarizing in case you have missed it. Microsoft has decided to offer an alternative to the costs of $ 30 which were previously necessary to obtain an additional year of security updates for Windows 10 (until October 2026).
So, instead of coupling this money, you can now choose to ask the Windows backup application to synchronize all your PC settings on the cloud. If you allow this to happen – via the connection with a Microsoft account – you can get the additional year of very significant security updates without cost. This gives you much more breathing space to determine what you may want to do next, which is ideal for those who cannot go to Windows 11 because of its higher system requirements (or those who simply refuse).
Of course, “free” is generally not completely free, and the cost here, so to speak, makes it possible to synchronize your settings. For this reason, some online commentators have accused Microsoft of almost a kind of “blackmail” in terms of access to your data. However, I should note that the label for Microsoft’s offer is important here, and you do not synchronize all your personal data in OneDrive or anything – everything you have to synchronize is your Windows settings.
And the synchronization of these parameters should also help in the future, if you want to make the transition to Windows 11 (or the following version of Windows) on a later date on a new PC. Microsoft’s hope, it seems, is that it will facilitate this transition, and therefore people are therefore more likely to follow this path.
I don’t think there is an underlying reason for Microsoft here to put your claws in your personal data as some suggest, so in my book, all that seems fairly fair. If you are not convinced, however, it’s just as fair – you don’t have to take Microsoft on this option. You can pay instead (or exchange 1,000 Microsoft reward points, if you have them, which is another alternative), or simply go ahead and go from Windows 10 to the end of life in October 2025.
Whatever you do, do not stay on Windows 10 without security updates – no matter what you care about the nose of Microsoft potentially in your data, a hacker could really make your life a misery by compromising your PC due to an unpleasant vulnerability because your system has no security updates.
Taking a wider perspective, I have half revised that Microsoft can even offer more than a year of additional support to consumers (in the same way as it treats companies).
Mainly because this new offer linked to Windows backup arrived at the last minute, I largely suspect to appease some of the fears of “Scrapheap imposing Windows 10 PC activists who are (rightly) concerned by the environmental impact of the requirements of the Microsoft Windows 11 system. (Those who prevent a lot from potential modlers from switching to the new SG, due to an older CPU or the absence of a specific security functionality, TPM 2.0).
And so I do not think it is unimaginable that Microsoft can offer a second year of prolonged support to consumers, and I very firmly believe that the company should do it. We will see, but for the moment, with an additional year of support on the table for free (effectively), it is not necessary to rush to abandon Windows 10 for many people. Unless your trust in Microsoft is particularly low, or you don’t have a Microsoft account and you don’t want to register (to synchronize your settings).
There are, of course, other options outside of Windows – the main one being a switch to Linux. Of course, in this case, you must be ready to leave Microsoft’s ecosystem and establish some of the limits that one of the best Linux distros will come (mainly around compatible software, especially PC games).
Meanwhile, we can expect new adoption peaks for Windows 11 in the near future, although perhaps not to the same extent that some people could expect, given these additional choices that Microsoft has just introduced.
