IT asset management firm Lansweeper recently conducted a survey of 10-million users and their data shows that Windows 11, despite being a free upgrade, has a very low adoption rate. This contrasts the initial adoption rate reports from AdDuplex that surveyed only 5000 systems.
In their investigation, Lansweeper discovers that Windows 11 has a very paltry 0.21% of users with Windows 8 even surpassing it at 0.95% userbase. Windows XP is at 3.62% to add more fuel to that fire, an already EOL OS that poses more security risks for end-users is still holding well.
For clarity, this is primarily surveyed on corporate and enterprise users including virtual machines which is still a valid number. Still, gamers are also sizable market for Windows and right now Steam is a reliable source for that with their Steam Hardware and Software Stats. The recent November results for the survey actually puts Windows 11 at a sizable 8.28% of a possible 200 million possible users. Steam accounts for a large portion of the gaming market with platform owner Valve commanding some of the biggests esports titles on the planet namely Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and DOTA 2. Â Esports stats show that the MOBA game tournaments have the largest amount of payouts with $432 million in total estimated prize pool by 2021. From all the games listed above DotA 2 has the highest total prize pool with $276 million.
Now back to Windows 11, this isn’t mostly a choice-based issue, Microsoft themselves put this on themselves by restricting upgrades to TPM2.0-equipped machines made in the last 3 years. Users can still bypass this restriction, but is not an out-of-the-box experience.
That being said, Microsoft has not given any incentives for users despite the promising marketing behind Windows 11 and many are voicing dissatisfaction on the UI changes being forced onto users like the familiar desktop context-menu or the lack of functionalities of the taskbar.
For all of Windows 11’s step forward, it is also 2-steps backwards for productivity and Microsoft should be working to appease these feedback if they hope for Windows 11 to take off or not be another Vista or Windows 8.
