Microsoft has given itself a seemingly impossible race against time. With almost exactly a year to run before Windows 10’s unpopular end-of-life hits users in October 2025, Windows 11 is still failing to hook the hundreds of millions more users it needs to prevent a generational support nightmare coming true.
But maybe—and it’s a big maybe—there’s some light starting to penetrate this gloomy tunnel. We don’t have official numbers from Microsoft, but the latest data just in from StatCounter suggests some inroads are starting to be made. In the last 12-months, around 130 million Windows 10 users have switched to Windows 11. The bad news though, is that almost 900 million Windows 10 users are still holding out. The switch from Windows 10 to Windows 11 is finally picking up pace, but remains far, far behind what we’ve seen before with similar OS transitions.
Windows 11 is of course a uniquely positioned update, given the security hardware requirement that precludes hundreds of millions of PCs from an OS upgrade. But with another year gone, the reality is that machines would now need to be fairly old to fail the hurdle. There’s clearly much more to it than that.
Three-years on from the release of Windows 11, the shiny new OS has an image problem that Microsoft doesn’t seem able to address. Quite what will happen 12-months from now remains to be seen. Speculation continues that users may be offered a support extension or a fudged workaround, putting aside the paid-for support options that will be made available with escalating pricing.
Also this week, Microsoft has started to roll out its Windows 2024 update, which is unsurprisingly dominated by AI and “the latest Copilot+ PC innovation.” The new Windows 11 24H2 update “is a full operating system (OS) swap that contains new foundational elements required to deliver transformational AI experiences and exceptional performance,” Microsoft says, as it details its new features.
With AI front and center, the headline context behind this update will be Recall, the controversial screenshot feature that seeks to store a complete documentary record of everything users do on their PCs. This landed badly when first announced given the security and especially privacy implications, and so it now comes with compromises including options to disable or even uninstall.
Viewed another way, there are almost twice as many Windows users unwilling as yet to make an AI leap as those that have done. Windows 11 didn’t launch with AI at its heart, but that’s how it is being presented now. And so with AI the headline act—just as it is with the latest iOS and Android OS updates hitting those same users’ mobiles, we will start to see how universally the appeal of these updates is landing.
Month-by-month for the next year you can expect updates on the accelerating switch numbers required to avoid that support nightmare. That will all start this week as user reviews and responses come through for the latest AI updates. And for all those holding out, the weekly reports covering Windows 11 hardware upgrade workarounds and likely support options post next October will continue.
