Can the modern version of a popular operating system turn out to be even less interesting to users than its 20-year-old predecessor? The answer seems to be “yes,” according to a new survey from IT management provider Lansweeper, which scanned 10 million Windows devices with its software this month to get an idea of how each version of the OS is faring among users. Metrics indicate that Windows 11 has a share of just 1.44%, a pretty sad number that ranks below even Windows XP, an ancient version of Microsoft’s operating system that released in the fall of 2001 but remains present on 1.71% of the devices surveyed. Windows 11 adoption is believed to be moving at a slower pace due to the strict hardware requirements that Microsoft enacted for the OS.
“Many organizations have been put off from having to buy new machines that meet these conditions, while others are simply happy with the current existence of Windows 10 which continues to be supported until 2025,” said Roel Decneut, Lansweeper’s Chief Strategy Officer, in a statement. “This situation will likely continue in the future unless businesses are given a compelling reason to upgrade.”
Windows 11 Adoption Is Lower Than Windows XP, Survey Claims (PCMag)
The results found that only 1.44% of the devices had Windows 11 installed, which is lower than the 1.71% for Windows XP. In contrast, Windows 10 maintains a dominant share at 80.34%.
Although Windows 11’s adoption is low at 1.44%, the number actually went up almost three times from 0.52% back in January.
It’s also important to note that other surveys have found much higher Windows 11 adoption numbers. Last month, the app advertising platform AdDuplex found Windows 11 usage was at 19.4%, although this represented a mere 0.1% growth from the previous month. Meanwhile, the Steam hardware survey from Valve estimates Windows 11 usage has reached 16.8%.
Lansweeper said its own survey comprises 20% enterprise systems and another 80% from consumer machines through polling done by the company’s Fing network security scanner product. All the data from the survey was collected “from aggregated, anonymized data points,” with user consent, the company added.