Sunday, July 6th 2025
Windows 11 Finally Overtakes Windows 10 as the Most Dominant Operating System
A new king has been crowned. As of July 2025, data from StatCounter shows that Windows 11 now runs on 51.77% of all Windows PCs, overtaking Windows 10's 45.02% share for the first time. Released in October 2021, Windows 11 initially struggled, capturing less than 10% of installations by the end of its first year. In 2023, its market share had climbed to 28%, and by late 2024, it reached 36%. The recent surge is a result of a combination of factors. First, Microsoft has begun highlighting the approaching end of support for standard editions of Windows 10 on October 14, 2025. Second, many organizations and individual users have upgraded their hardware in search of the latest security improvements and software enhancements. Finally, features such as performance optimizations, tighter security defaults, and built-in support for AI-driven tools have made Windows 11 more attractive to both enterprises and gamers.
According to these figures, more than 700 million devices now run Windows 11. Although StatCounter does not capture every device and its figures may differ from those of other analytics services, it provides a reliable snapshot of broader trends. As Windows 10 approaches its end of mainstream support in October 2025, the coming months will reveal whether these incentives and new hardware offerings will sustain Windows 11's upward trajectory or prompt users to seek extended support instead.
According to these figures, more than 700 million devices now run Windows 11. Although StatCounter does not capture every device and its figures may differ from those of other analytics services, it provides a reliable snapshot of broader trends. As Windows 10 approaches its end of mainstream support in October 2025, the coming months will reveal whether these incentives and new hardware offerings will sustain Windows 11's upward trajectory or prompt users to seek extended support instead.
77 Comments on Windows 11 Finally Overtakes Windows 10 as the Most Dominant Operating System
My Windows 10 PC is much snappier, even though it's running a 10900K instead of a 9800X3D, like my Windows 11 computer.
Windows 10 performs better than 11, and gamers probably don't care about the AI crap.
I’ll try to get Win 11 to work on my laptop after 25H2. I have to have Windows for work and I don’t want to give up on the Win 11 license that came with it.
Next time I need to format my Win 10 desktop, I’ll try Linux.
PCGH had similar news post days ago
I would be good money on the personal user count that are gamers approaching much closer to 50%. Non gamers have been moving away from windows for years now, Android's global marketshare is double that of Windows, and iOS is 2/3rds the size of Windows as a whole.
I wish somebody would publish how many windows PCs are on a domain/entra VS a workgroup. I'd bet its over 50% now.
W10 for gaming systems ftw. Until it stops working of course.
I bet if MS did another "Mohave" experiment most people would not notice. Look it up. It's fascinating how calling something (perceived as bad) by another name and telling it's a new thing people are much more positive about it.
Unfortunately first impressions are hard to reverse and once a piece of software or a game has garnered bad initial feedback it's very hard to make it a success story. It has been done, but not often.Going by Steam stats most gamers already run Win11.
The average home windows user is probably sticking with Windows 10, because for a lot of home users using Windows 11 means having to buy a new PC, also as the average users are using a phone or tablet more than a home PC.IMO, Windows 10 feels faster, it may be the really awful UI menu delays, but W10 felt a lot faster. And yeah I know you can debloat and customize W11 to feel faster than W10, but W11 shouldn't be worse at stock than W10. I might trust an experiment if it were conducted by a 3rd party, Vista just plain sucked until SP1, even then it was slower than XP was.
I tested them in all memory testing software existing on this barren earth, spent literal hundreds of hours in benchmarks. My hardware is fine. How W11 works with it is not.
W11 is hot bollocks anyway because of WordPad deprecation, AI in everything, default context menu being absolutely useless, updates breaking everything, and other less than intelligent choices. I'm yet to know what it can do that W10 canna that I could theoretically need. It's also 10+ gigabytes heavier. To hell with it. I'm not upgrading until W10 is completely unusable.
Wordpad is a nonissue as it can easily be reinstalled via optional features for those that want it. AI is only with Recall and Copilot which can easily be disabled.
I wouldn't say the default context menu is useless. For a power user like myself - yes. But my friend who is not computer savvy actually found it helpful that common actions like cut, copy, paste etc included icons in the new menu. Win10 also had issues where updates broke things. I remember how 1809 caused literal data loss for people. Win11 has avoided such bad incident so far. But like Win10 it has had it's fair share of issues that stem from the 2014 layoffs of internal QA.
In fact reading the quoted criticism of Win10 from Wikipedia it's eerily similar to current Win11 criticism:
I love how Windows 7 seems to be holding on..
I'm running-
Threadripper 2950X with 32GB of RAM with a Vega64 XTX and I cant bump to Windows 11 because they removed the Zen 1+ from the official compatibility list.