Windows Lost 400 Million Users in the Last Three Years

It’s reasonable to assume that Windows has lost about 400 million users in the last three years, as these reports are usually carefully examined by the company’s legal department. Microsoft Executive Vice President Yusuf Mehdi revealed last week in a blog post that there are already over one billion active Windows devices worldwide.

Although that number may appear great at first, it is a significant decrease from earlier figures. Microsoft’s 2022 annual report stated that more than 1.4 billion devices were running Windows 10 or 11, according to ZDNET. 

Although support for older versions nearing towards final stage, increasingly aggressive drive of Microsoft to convince customers to switch to Windows 11 may be explained by this modest decline in user base. The tactic seems to be intended to encourage people to either buy new Windows 11-compatible PCs or update their current systems.

Even if macOS of Apple has grown into a greater danger to Windows, particularly since the release of Apple Silicon, it is highly unlikeable that all of the Windows consumers who were previously using Windows have migrated to Mac.

This is due to the fact that even Mac sales have been declining. In accordance with a Statista piece from 2023, Macs used to generate well over 85% of income of Apple, but now they only make up 7.7%.

The international movement toward mobile-first computing believed to be the primary cause of the decline in user base of Window. Desktop operating systems like Windows are becoming less and less popular as smartphones and tablets continue to take the place of traditional PCs for many daily chores.

Microsoft’s choice to impose stringent hardware requirements for Windows 11 exacerbates the problem. Because of this, many users who have fully functional older machines are unable to upgrade, and some choose to stick with unsupported versions or abandon the Windows platform entirely.

Additionally, Windows 11 has been criticized for being less user-friendly than Windows 10, with many users being irritated by its design decisions that more closely mirror Apple’s environment, interface modifications, and increased emphasis on data collecting hence Windows lost 400 million users.