Windows seemingly lost 400 million users in the past three years — official Microsoft statements show hints of a shrinking user base

It is a shame that the article has been updated and Microsoft is denying the drop. I will get excited when the drop is reflected in Steam data.

What a well earned drop. They keep forcing their bullshit on us, of course we're interested in other OS's as a result.

I do use windows for most things, but my servers will never run anything but Linux at this point.

Everyone talking about how it's because of Windows 11 or their greed driving people away, etc. But they're ignoring the big one:

People don't need as many computers these days. You don't have a lot of households with a laptop for every member of the family because smartphones and tablets have replaced the PC for many people for media consumption and basic tasks.

The search function has never been the same since vista. I'm not doing a web search from the search bar. I am specifically searching for files on my computer. F-off. And now I'm constantly asked to save to some cloud I don't give a shit about.

We're in the process of moving to Linux in our company, entirely because of how aggressively awful Windows 11 is. We'd have been perfectly happy staying on Windows 10 forever, but last week our head of development woke up to discover that Windows 10 had spontaneously chosen to "upgrade" itself during the night without him agreeing to it.

Forcing people to buy a new computer for nothing more than a security chip on the motherboard will do that

I wonder how cloud accessibility plays into this. In the past if I had a dedicated windows app I might typically have maybe a hundred windows desktops accessing onsite servers. Nowadays I can replace that with thin clients and cloud based RDSH servers.

Just pure greed and giving users less and less control of an OS will push people away. It did for me outside of work. I don't have any reason to touch Windows that often.

Enshittification will do that, yep

windows dying doesn't help. they are on a shopping spree buying every AAA game that tencent haven't already bought.

good. fuck. microsoft.

they had the choice of not being fucking awful and they had no reason to. im glad its crumbling for them even if wayyy too late.

Just want to say, Google Docs is NOT free. Just because you don't send them money doesn't mean you aren't paying.

I'll be joining soon enough, going to dual boot with Linux. Only keeping windows for games that won't work on Linux.

I began using Windows in 1992. I switched to MacOS this year and I'm never going back.

I haven’t had windows for 5 or 6 years when I switched to Mac. But earlier this year I bought a cheap Windows 11 machine because Windows was required for a contract I thought I was going to get (but didn’t). I was going to return it but thought meh it might be nice to have a personal laptop I can play around with. But I was unimpressed with Windows 11 so much that it mostly gathers dust now.

I’m thinking this is the perfect opportunity to take the plunge into Linux. Has anyone on here used Linux and have any advice?

Hey, I have an idea that will help Microsoft:

why not add even more AI that logs everything and then reports it to the government through additional telemetry?

then they could even require the next edition to include a dedicated advertising GPU to take those logs and create tailored ads on the wallpaper as well as occasionally parse the logs and generate summaries for safety purposes!

that will bring the customers back and boost short-term profits too!

This aligns with statcounter data here: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-200901-202505

Windows market share on desktop has been slowly but steadily declining. From 95+% in 2009, to almost 70% today. In the same time period Linux went up from 0.6% to 4%, which is not bad.

My new laptop came with Windows 11, but that’s gone now. Steamdeck must be helping with these figures too. Good work everyone.

If this calculation proves true, one would think losing close to 1/3 of its customers would cause M$ to rethink some of its business policies/plans...

Such as forcing folks to retire perfectly good hardware and buy new if they wish to run Windoze11.

But then again, it's M$... 🤷‍♂️ 🤦‍♂️

Welcome in from the cold. We have hot cocoa and blankets.

It's Linux for me but I also have to assume tablet culture plays a role too.

I must be in the minority but generally I like Win 11. Most of my clients still on Windows as well so I have to keep up to date...

I’m thinking they’re doing it on purpose. Think you’re a multibazillion company, want to quit your least profitable line of work (OS business) but it’s also your most famous front. Diluting a business is how you quit without scaring investors.

I know everybody's here to rag on Microsoft, but I honestly am quite pleased with Windows 11. I comfortably do software development in an Ubuntu shell using the Widows Subsystem for Linux and it honestly works like a charm. Then I can unplug and play video games in Steam and everything works great, there, too.

Of course this is all possible on Linux, but my point here is that Windows really isn't as awful as everybody makes it out to be.

Meanwhile, MacOS enters into a second decade of no innovation. It still relies on Homebrew for developer tools, still lacks any substantial improvements to Xcode and only ever receives iterative cosmetic changes like video lock screens and the new bundle of desktop backgrounds for its latest "update."

It sounds like a mixture of Chromebooks, and people simply not owning a traditional computer.

Either way, it seems to be mostly Google that's winning here.

Mobile and I imagine Google Docs really did a number on Windows necessity. In my experience, large companies and government rely on Windows and O365, smaller organizations use Google Docs. Even universities I've seen start with classrooms a decade ago using Google Docs and hangouts to eventually using Google Suite or whatever its called these days for student/faculty email

At least word documents saved as PDF and shared is way more common today than a decade ago. A decade ago I mainly remember seeing nothing but Excel and SPSS in classes, now I see professors showing how to do stuff in Google Sheets. For a long time computer science and math professors have been geeky and idealistic so you'd regularly see Libre/OpenOffice used in lectures

Another is Blender. In like 2008 ~2.49 Blender, professionals would scoff. A decade later Blender 2.8 releases and by today I hear way less vitriol and more opensess as another tool in the toolbox or recognition as great for at least learning or professional use for smaller teams. Flow was a successful movie made with it

Davinci Resolve is getting better and a lot more mainstream today than a decade ago. And stuff like Kdenlive is more powerful than the vast majority of people need. People were doing great stuff a decade+ ago with iMovie and basic Windows Movie Maker

Video games are a lot easier now because of Valve with Linux

Mobile, adults used to have laptop that pretty much excited to login to their credit cards and pay them, use TurboxTax, print out MapQuest directions, etc. Phones have made a laptop redundant I think for most people now. Work provides one if needed. TV for movies and phone for everything else

To me there's nothing Microsoft can do to stem the decline of Windows. Mobile first is standard now. Microsoft has no presence in smart TVs because they failed with Windows Mobile and Xbox hardware is on life support and they never made the stripped down Xbox Windows available for TV makers anyways. The loss towards mobile will continue.

Then there's national security concerns for countries around the world to be reliant on American software and hardware. Diversification of operating system has picked up heavily. It started like 20 years ago but it didn't seem to really pick up until the Huawei sanctions and driving Huawei to their own OS and Chinese government to invest even more into domestic Linux distro a. Then the recent American trade wars renewing interest in European countries in Linux and LibreOffice. My understanding has been that Linux had had strong adoption in India for some time now

Desktop Linux in the US, I say just keep focusing on prosumer/professional users. Software developers and other IT professionals are already Linux heavy. Some commercial software is available like Maya and Davinci Resolve. Krita and Blender are great. Kdenlive is good. Seems like GIMP and Inkscape development may be picking up momentum. Darktable is great. Valve keep focusing on SteamOS and community distros keep supporting more handhelds making every year easier and easier for gaming. Steam Deck 2 is hopefully a way more available in retail than the first deck. First product work out the kinks and prove viability. Second product and possibly AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, etc are way more interested in low power gaming than before as well as first class Linux support

Outside of the US, I feel like Trump both term one and now term two has really given Linux and open source software a global boost in appeal.

They don’t care they have Azure now.

No source for the blog post. Here it is: windows blog

Note that the number has been updated, and at the bottom they state that that figure has been updated.

The original text said 'over a billion'. 1.4 billion is over a billion.

They just had to copy the walled garden approach of the competitors, and badly at that. They could have not pursued forcing users to a Microsoft account. They could've avoided the telemetry and ads business(/bloat). Google has them beat there anyway. They had the more open alternative to Google and Apple but they're trying terribly to be second fiddle to them. And now Linux has become a good enough alternative to what Windows should've been. They are still the choice for business machines, but they've been terrible with consumer devices.

Given there’s 7 billion people on earth, I’m a bit surprised this number is so low at only 1.4 billion. People will usually have a home computer and then use one at work, plus all the devices in data centers and other environments where they are not used as a desktop.

Because they made it shit....

Where are they going? There's no way it's Linux, right? So I guess it's Mac?

I wonder how many millions of computers are going to end up getting thrown away because they don't meet the ridiculous requirements for windows 11.

400 million user loss doesn't sound like "quietly shrinking". Sounds like outright hemorrhaging users because instead of improving, you are consistently making products shittier each year.

I just wish Linux remote desktop support wasn't absolute dogshit.

People will keep breaking their arms stroking their own selves, instead of thinkinig rationally.

Sigh...

I wonder if there's any correlation with AI killing the office job market.

Outside of the biz world, people aren't buying as many devices that would use the os. Or not replacing the ones they had that can't upgrade?