Microsoft EVP Yusuf Mehdi said in a blog post last week that Windows powers over a billion active devices globally. This might sound like a healthy number, but according to ZDNET, the Microsoft annual report for 2022 said that more than 1.4 billion devices were running Windows 10 or 11. Given that these documents contain material information and have allegedly been pored over by the tech giant’s lawyers, we can safely assume that Windows’ user base has been quietly shrinking in the past three years, shedding around 400 million users.
This is probably why Microsoft has been aggressively pushing users to upgrade to Windows 11 after the previous version of the OS loses support — so that its users would install the latest version of Windows on their current system (or get a new PC if their system is incapable of running the latest version). Although macOS is a threat to Windows, especially with the launch of Apple Silicon, we cannot say that those 400 million users all went and bought a MacBook. That’s because, as far back as 2023, Mac sales have also been dropping, with Statista reporting the computer line, once holding more than 85% of the company revenue, now making up just 7.7%.
I think it’s both. People who’ve never before really considered using Linux have started migrating off of Windows ever since the end of service announcement for Win10.
Sure. But I think the total number of desktop Linux users is a two digit millions number. So those few millions we’ve attracted lately are more a decimal point when talking about 400 million. They’re there and part of the picture, though.