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Windows 10 still growing, but Win 11 had another bad month, says AdDuplex
Adoption is going so great that growth is barely registering
The apparent standstill of Windows 11 adoption is continuing for a second month, according to figures from ad platform AdDuplex.
Microsoft said this week that Windows 11 adoption is going well, with CEO Satya Nadella stating in its Q3 earnings call that enterprise adoption of the OS was happening "at a faster pace than any previous release," but judging by data from both AdDuplex and Lansweeper, those figures must be starting from a very low base.
The usage share of Windows 11 in AdDuplex's figures grew by less than 0.4 percentage points in April (from 20 percent to 20.4 percent). This represents very slight improvement on March's 0.2 percentage point uptick, but it's a clear indication that explosive growth is highly unlikely for the operating system and its demanding list of hardware requirements.
Windows 10, on the other hand, has continued to outpace its newer sibling. The share of the most recent version, 21H2, grew from having a 28.5 percent share of the pie last month to 35 percent this month – while even the decidedly long-in-the-tooth 21H1 managed a very slight gain from 26.4 percent to 26.5 percent.
Last year, AdDuplex CEO Alan Mendelevich told The Register that the AdDuplex figures were heavily skewed toward consumer PCs, which, according to Mendelevich, were "much more likely to upgrade at the first opportunity."
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This explains the early growth and the tailing off that has occurred over the last few months. Consumers who can upgrade, have upgraded. Those who can't (most likely due to Microsoft's hardware demands for Windows 11 rather than a deep-seated dislike of the new Start Menu or the departure of Task Manager from the taskbar context menu) have held off.
Enterprises are clearly being cautious, as they are with any major operating system revision. Typically they hold off for 12 months to two years before adopting.
All of this makes Microsoft's talk of growth in the operating system's rate of adoption among organizations all the more baffling. A 100 percent growth rate, for example, sounds great unless the starting point is a single laptop in engineering.
There is also the question of what Nadella meant when he said "any previous release" – enterprises have moved from one release of Windows 10 to another rapidly but tend to be sluggish when it comes to major revisions (as shown by the tenacity of Windows 7 – and even XP – in some figures.)
The Register contacted Microsoft in order to get the raw data behind Nadella's claims. We will update should the company respond. ®