Windows 11 adoption stalls as Windows 10 End of Life looms large - a bad sign for Microsoft?

Windows 11 is suddenly going backwards with its market share according to the latest figures for desktop operating systems from one analytics firm.

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Are Windows 10 diehards who stick with the older OS going to far outnumber the holdouts with any past Microsoft operating system? (Image Credit: Microsoft)

Statcounter just produced its report for May 2025 (hat tip to Neowin) which shows that Windows 11 has dropped to 43.22%, after hitting 43.72% in April, representing a slide of 0.5%. On the other hand, Windows 10 has gained 0.25% to move up to 53.19%, so it's almost back to 10% ahead of Microsoft's newest OS.

Should Microsoft be concerned here? We'll come back to that shortly, but obviously we have to take any individual set of figures with some seasoning, and differences in the sample of Windows PCs the stats are drawn from may come into play here too. However, there's no doubting that it's surprising to see Windows 11 dropping in this way.

Mainly because for the whole of 2025 thus far, Windows 11 has made quite some headway in eating into Windows 10's market share, as you would expect. After all, Windows 10 is going to be out of support come October 2025, which is only four months away now. So, you'd imagine if anything, the migration footfall of those upgrading to Windows 11 would be starting to gather more pace.

Apparently not, and what we are seeing here is things stalling. Although as noted, it's not advisable to put too much weight on a single set of stats - so we'll just have to see if this sticky patch for Windows 11 continues next month.

Trouble ahead?

If this trend does indeed persist, that could indicate serious trouble ahead for Microsoft. In the past, users have been very slow to leave more popular operating systems - Windows 7 springs to mind - and those resisting the shove to move to Windows 11 are likely to be just as diehard in attitude with digging their heels in.

Of course, the problem this time isn't just about what people want (or don't want, rather), but what they can have. A good number of Windows 10 PCs simply can't be upgraded to the newest OS due to hardware requirements. That's a big issue with laptops in particular, where it's not possible to upgrade an old CPU that doesn't fit the Windows 11 spec even if you wanted to.

In short, the number of Windows 10 users hanging around when the support deadline expires could be an eye-opening percentage - and how many of them will exercise the option to pay for Microsoft's extended updates program?

As we said, it's easy enough to envisage a difficult road ahead for Microsoft, and this latest set of stats is the first hint of smoke before what could be a fiery time for Windows.

Read more: Miss Windows Vista? Well, both of you can now recreate the OS in Windows 11 with a new mod