Although Microsoft is vigorously promoting its latest Windows 11 system, the popularity of the operating system seems to be encountering difficulties, the latest market research shows that Windows 11 only runs on 1.44% of windows PCs currently on the market, even lagging behind Windows XP and Windows 7 and other old systems.
The data comes from asset management software vendor Lansweeper, where Windows XP and Windows 7 have a larger market share than Windows 11. Windows 7 has a market share of 4.7% and Windows XP has a market share of 1.71%. Windows 10 remains ahead of the curve in adoption, with 80.34% installs, which may be due to the ease of upgrading the operating system when it was launched.
On the consumer side, a major culprit for the slow adoption of Windows 11 may be due to the difficulty of upgrading older systems running Windows 10 or earlier to the latest operating system. Early on, Microsoft imposed hardware restrictions on Windows 11, with only PCs purchased in the last few years eligible to run the latest operating system. According to Lansweeper’s report, more than half of all PCs can’t upgrade to Windows 11 today.
“Lansweeper’s data, based on about 30 million Windows devices in 60,000 organizations, shows that on average, only 44.4 percent of workstations are eligible for automatic upgrades, while the rest will not,” Lansweeper wrote in its market research.
Also, if existing software performs well on current operating systems, businesses may feel there is little reason to upgrade to Windows 11. Historically, businesses have also been slower to upgrade than consumers, who have focused more on the stability and consistency of the system than on design.
While Lansweeper’s numbers show low adoption of Windows 11, AdDuplex’s data is different. AdDuplex reports that Windows 11 adoption is close to 9 percent, but it’s still unclear how the two companies came up with their respective numbers and why there was such a big difference between the reports.