Folks complaining about Windows 11 hasn’t stopped it from hitting 1 billion customers

Complaining about Windows 11 is a well-liked sport amongst tech lovers on the Internet, whether or not you’re publicly switching to Linux, publishing guides in regards to the dozens of issues it’s good to do to make the OS much less annoying, or getting upset since you had been requested to sign up to an app after clicking a sign-in button.

Despite the negativity surrounding the present model of Windows, it stays probably the most broadly used working system on the world’s desktop and laptop computer computer systems, and folks normally want to stay to what they’re used to. As a consequence, Windows 11 has simply cleared a giant milestone—Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella mentioned on the corporate’s most up-to-date earnings name (via The Verge) that Windows 11 now has over 1 billion customers worldwide.

Windows 11 additionally reached that milestone only a few months faster than Windows 10 did—1,576 days after its preliminary public launch on October 5, 2021. Windows 10 took 1,692 days to succeed in the identical milestone, primarily based on its July 29, 2015, common availability date and Microsoft’s announcement on March 16, 2020.

That’s particularly notable as a result of Windows 10 was initially provided as a free improve to all customers of Windows 7 and Windows 8, with no change in system necessities relative to these older variations. Windows 11 was (and nonetheless is) a free improve to Windows 10, however its comparatively excessive system necessities imply there are many Windows 10 PCs that aren’t eligible to run Windows 11.

Windows 10’s lengthy goodbye

It’s onerous to gauge what number of PCs are nonetheless working Windows 10 as a result of public knowledge on the matter is unreliable. But we are able to nonetheless make educated guesses—and it’s clear that the software program remains to be working on lots of of thousands and thousands of PCs, regardless of hitting its official end-of-support date final October.

Statcounter, one popularly referenced supply that collects OS and browser utilization stats from net analytics knowledge, experiences that between 50 and 55 % of Windows PCs worldwide are working Windows 11, and between 40 and 45 % of them run Windows 10. Statcounter additionally reports that Windows 10 and Windows 7 utilization have risen barely over the previous couple of months, which highlights the noisiness of the information. But as of late 2025, Dell COO Jeffrey Clarke said that there have been nonetheless roughly 1 billion energetic Windows 10 PCs in use, round 500 million of which weren’t eligible for an improve due to {hardware} necessities. If Windows 11 simply cleared the 1 billion person mark, that implies Statcounter’s reporting of a virtually evenly cut up person base isn’t too removed from the reality.