As Windows 10 inches closer to its death, Windows 11 appears to somehow get less popular

We've been treated to some new figures for the market share of Windows, and in August, there was a surprising turn of events for Microsoft's operating systems - Windows 11 has seemingly dropped users.

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Yes, despite the fact that Windows 10 is about to shuffle off to software heaven (or maybe hell, depending on your viewpoint) with its End of Life in October 2025, it has actually gained adoption based on Statcounter's latest report.

According to the analytics firm, in August 2025, Windows 10 crept up to 45.53%, whereas Windows 11 fell to 49.08%. That represents a gain of 2.65% in a single month for the older operating system, and a loss of 4.43% for Microsoft's newest desktop OS.

As you can see, this wasn't a direct swing from Windows 11 to 10 - so where did the other nearly 2% of folks that vanished from Windows 11's share go? The other redistribution of adoption here mostly went to Windows 7, which nearly doubled its market share with an increase of 1.57% to leave it on 3.59%. Windows 8 also made a small gain, too, in improbable fashion.

Changing composition

So, what gives? What this illustrates is that the changing composition of the sample of Windows PCs used by Statcounter is having an impact on the figures - obviously a bunch of people haven't suddenly decided to install Windows 7. (Although that would be quite the statement in terms of a rebellion against Windows 11).

This is a lesson in being cautious about taking one single source of stats as a true indicator, because obviously the bigger picture is considerably more complex than this.

Still, Windows 11 clearly has dropped going by Statcounter's estimations, and this isn't a great sign for Microsoft, there are no two ways about that. Mainly because as the bell starts to toll more insistently for Windows 10, you'd certainly expect more folks to be shifting over to the newer OS (as happened the previous month). Although with the recently introduced free way to get Windows 10 security updates for another year, through to October 2026, we can perhaps expect less migration to Windows 11 now.

Regarding that free offer of extended support, it's worth noting that you do have to sync your PC settings to OneDrive to obtain it - which isn't a big deal in my opinion. Although if you prefer, you can pay $30 instead, but I know which route I'm taking. (And yes, I'm keeping my main PC as Windows 10 for now - but next year, I will upgrade to Windows 11, when the bugginess of 24H2 is a distant memory, hopefully).