- Windows 11 now has a market share of 72.78% of Windows versions
- According to StatCounter, it has increased by 22% in the past two months
- Windows 10 has dropped from 44.68% at the end of last year to 26.45%
It looks like Windows 10 is finally being pushed firmly aside, as Windows 11’s market share has risen sharply since 2026 began.
According to the latest figures for Windows market share in February 2026 from StatCounter, Windows 11 hit 72.78%. That was up from 62.41% in January, and OS was only at 50.73% at the end of December 2025.
In short, Windows 11 has gained a whopping 22% market share in just two months since this year began.
Unsurprisingly, the research firm recorded a similar decline for Windows 10, which stood at 44.68% at the end of 2025 and has now fallen to 26.45%, a drop of over 18%.
Windows 11’s other gains came at the expense of Windows 7, which has dropped to almost nothing (finally), falling to 0.6% (it was at 3.8% by the end of 2025).
Analysis: PC price increases are likely a driving factor
This is a telling shift for Windows 11 after some serious wobbles for the operating system last year in terms of market share. Of course, we have to remember the usual caveats: this is just one set of numbers from a single source, and the way StatCounter collects its data doesn’t directly reflect the number of PCs out there. (It is based on website visits, a given Windows system that is very active online will have a disproportionate impact on the statistics, as I discussed recently).
Still, even with these nuances taken into account, something big has clearly happened over the past few months for Windows 11, with a shift of over 20%. But why now? I think this could well represent quite a few companies that needed hardware upgrades to get Windows 11 – as their fleets of Windows 10 computers weren’t compatible with the newer OS – and they’ve gone ahead and upgraded now, to avoid the bigger PC price hikes that may well come into play later this year (triggered by the RAM crisis).
The same is likely true for consumers, who may have pulled the trigger on a new Windows 11 laptop in the past few months to grab a decent price, rather than being hit more by the aforementioned memory crunch-related price hikes.
Businesses and consumers alike still have to decide what to do by October 2026, as that’s when Microsoft’s free year of support for Windows 10 runs out for the latter (and the price of extended support increases for businesses). I’m guessing March will be another significant spike in Windows 11 adoption before things slow down until October.
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