Win11, 1 year on: 15.5% install-share

The Register has just published an article titled “Windows 11 runs on fewer-than 1 in 6 PCs”.

I thought for-comparison I’d have a look (via Statcounter) at how it compares to other recent Windows releases one-year after the General Availability date of each release (or two-years for Vista, as the oldest stats offered are for 2009, not 2008).

(Notes: “W8” = Windows 8.0 and 8.1 combined. The percentages show “of all Windows installs at the given dates, what percentage were which major Windows release”. They do NOT represent actual OS install-share at those times; all percentages would be lower overall if macOS and Linux were included.)

Windows 11

Released: 5 October 2021

1-year later: 15.5% (W10=71.3% • W7=9.6% • W8=3.1% • XP=0.4%)

Windows 10

Released: 29 July 2015

1-year later: 28.2% (W7=48.9% • W8=13.5% • XP=7.6% • Vista=1.6%)

Windows 8.1

Released: 17 October 2013

1-year later: 11.7% (W7=62.2% • XP=15.0% • W8.0=7.4% • Vista=3.4%)

Windows 8.0

Released: 26 October 2012

1-year later: 9.0% (W7=60.6% • XP=23.5% • Vista=6.2%)

Windows 7

Released: 22 Oct 2009

1-year later: 24.5% (XP=57.2% • Vista=17.8% • 2000=0.2%)

Windows Vista

Released: 30 Jan 2007

2-years later: 20.0% (XP=78.5% • 2000=1.0%)

Some takeaways:

• Windows 11 has the third-slowest uptake since 8.0 and 8.1 (unless you could make an argument to combine their stats)

• Windows 10 was more in-use one-year from its GA date than the generally-seen-as-more-popular Windows 7!

• Windows Vista one-year after GA was 4.5% higher than Windows 11 (though in two-years still had 4.5% less-installs than Windows 7 had after one!)

• Windows 8 (8.0 + 8.1) either did not surpass Vista’s install-share during its lifetime, or if it did, it only just did so

Oh, and one thing I do appreciate (as I’m-sure someone will point-out):

• Yes, some of this data will be somewhat-meaningless unless the number of PCs in-use has remained consistent during that time. If more-and-more PCs have been purchased (and existing ones had their OSes updated), then Windows 11 may still be installed on more actual, individual PCs than say Vista or Windows 7 were. For example, if say there were 1 billion PCs in-use worldwide in 2007, and Windows had a 90% market-share, Vista would be on 180 million of those PCs; whereas if there were now, say, 3 billion PCs, and Windows has an 85% market-share, Windows 11 would be on 395 million. Yes, I do get that… but correlating all the stats above against total number of PCs in-use worldwide for each year would be a bit-beyond what I was looking to do, sorry. But feel-free to do so yourself…! 😉