Windows 11’s growth was a fluke as market share falls again in December

Microsoft is entering 2026 with discouraging numbers for Windows 11, as the latest figures from Statcounter reveal that market share for Microsoft’s operating system fell further in December despite the ending of support for Windows 10 in much of the world. Statcounter The share of Windows 11 users fell by just over 3 percentage points, from 53.7 percent down to 50.73. At the same time, the share of Windows 10 users increased from 42.7 percent to 44.68 percent, while the share of Windows 8 users actually rose from 2.93 percent to 3.83. (Huh.) Overall, 2025 seems to have been a bit of a nightmare year for Microsoft , with—among other things—floundering AI initiatives that didn’t really catch on, plus a series of inadequate Windows updates.