Windows User Base Shrinks By 400 Million In Three Years (tomshardware.com) 69
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: Microsoft EVP Yusuf Mehdi said in a blog post last week that Windows powers over a billion active devices globally. This might sound like a healthy number, but according to ZDNET, the Microsoft annual report for 2022 said that more than 1.4 billion devices were running Windows 10 or 11. Given that these documents contain material information and have allegedly been pored over by the tech giant's lawyers, we can safely assume that Windows' user base has been quietly shrinking in the past three years, shedding around 400 million users.
This is probably why Microsoft has been aggressively pushing users to upgrade to Windows 11 after the previous version of the OS loses support -- so that its users would install the latest version of Windows on their current system (or get a new PC if their system is incapable of running the latest version). Although macOS is a threat to Windows, especially with the launch of Apple Silicon, we cannot say that those 400 million users all went and bought a MacBook. That's because, as far back as 2023, Mac sales have also been dropping, with Statista reporting the computer line, once holding more than 85% of the company revenue, now making up just 7.7%. The shrinking Windows user base can be attributed to a combination of factors -- a major one being the global move toward a mobile-first world, where smartphones and tablets are increasingly replacing traditional PCs for everyday computing needs.
At the same time, Microsoft's strict hardware requirements for Windows 11 have alienated users with perfectly functional older machines, prompting some to stick with unsupported versions or abandon Windows entirely. Additionally, many users find Windows 11 less intuitive than its predecessor and are frustrated by Microsoft's push toward data collection and Apple-style design changes.
This is probably why Microsoft has been aggressively pushing users to upgrade to Windows 11 after the previous version of the OS loses support -- so that its users would install the latest version of Windows on their current system (or get a new PC if their system is incapable of running the latest version). Although macOS is a threat to Windows, especially with the launch of Apple Silicon, we cannot say that those 400 million users all went and bought a MacBook. That's because, as far back as 2023, Mac sales have also been dropping, with Statista reporting the computer line, once holding more than 85% of the company revenue, now making up just 7.7%. The shrinking Windows user base can be attributed to a combination of factors -- a major one being the global move toward a mobile-first world, where smartphones and tablets are increasingly replacing traditional PCs for everyday computing needs.
At the same time, Microsoft's strict hardware requirements for Windows 11 have alienated users with perfectly functional older machines, prompting some to stick with unsupported versions or abandon Windows entirely. Additionally, many users find Windows 11 less intuitive than its predecessor and are frustrated by Microsoft's push toward data collection and Apple-style design changes.
400m more LInux desktops -- Year of Linux Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:400m more LInux desktops -- Year of Linux Final (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that means that users are not seeing value in using Windows any longer as other alternatives exist (mobile, tablet, and Linux, etc..). Hence Microsoft's push to monetize the user (privacy rape) as much as possible with the shit known as Windows 11.
Re:400m more LInux desktops -- Year of Linux Final (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:400m more LInux desktops -- Year of Linux Final (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pure incompetence on Microsoft's part. They utterly failed in the mobile market, multiple times. The idiots tried to turn a workstation OS into a hybrid mobile/workstation OS instead. Satya has put the nail in the coffin with the Windows 11 push. Windows 11 is the most God awful mess you could imagine. Pile .. of .. shit.
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I think anti trust still loomed when they had their best shot at mobile too.
When they had windows mobile and Xbox was the largest console in the US I thought for sure they'd be able to dominate.
I basically pictured them using a Microsoft account to allow for the phone to participate in Xbox chat and let people talk to their gaming friends on the go. It seemed like a no brainer to me that they could dominate chat, have significant phone penetration with gamers, and keep people a reason to stick with the Xbox
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The idiots tried to turn a workstation OS into a hybrid mobile/workstation OS instead
And what do you think Android is? Exactly that, a cosmetic skin on top of a workstation/server OS. See, it's not about whether you can do that or not - you obviously can, by example - it's about whether you can do it in a way that helps users more than it exploits them.
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The idiots tried to turn a workstation OS into a hybrid mobile/workstation OS instead.
As opposed to Apple who turned Unix(tm) into a mobile OS and er Android which turned Linux (basically a unix clone) into a mobile OS.
Still better than the first smartphone which ran an MS-DOS clone.
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Still better than the first smartphone which ran an MS-DOS clone.
We all want to hear more about this.
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I assume he's talking about the Nokia 9000? I had one, IIRC it ran something based upon GEOS, but you wouldn't have recognized it from the UI. It's entirely possible there was an MS DOS clone sitting managing the file system, but I don't recall having a command line (I'm not sure I even had direct access to files in the 9000's UI.)
TBH in the 1990s there were a lot of mobile OSes, mostly for use with PDAs, and many were influenced heavily by desktop OSes at the time, but I'm not sure I'd call any clones. But
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Microsoft has never been good at much of anything. Take away the antitrust violations and they wouldn't even be around anymore.
But thanks to those antitrust violations and our complete unwillingness to vote for politicians that enforce law they can do things like lose 6 billion dollars on the OG Xbox and then just throw out another one and then throw out another one and lose
Re: 400m more LInux desktops -- Year of Linux Fina (Score:3)
Losing desktops? Probably justifiable from management pov.
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I thought I read microsoft profit was $68B last quarter .. even with attrition that is staggeringly profitable also an indication of monetary inflation. Phase 1 is over. It's time for protection money. Nice airline, I mean, government you got there. Shame if you might have to think for yourself anymore. We're raising rates, bitch! And you are going to pay.
Losing desktops? Probably justifiable from management pov.
They don't care. They are making money selling Linux time on Azure. Windows is dead to them.
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Ahhh well played microsoft, abandoning what you're good at to enter a competitive market to be one of many contenders.
Following the examples of radioshack and ibm.
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mobile, tablet, and Linux
One of these things is not like the others
One of these things just doesn't belong
Can you tell me which thing is not like the others
Before I finish this song?
Games (Score:2)
Can you tell me which thing is not like the others
The one which can play close to your entire Steam library of PC games, thanks to SteamDeck, SteamOS and Proton.
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Corporations don't want to make money. They want to make all the money. They are in all consuming all devouring Force.
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Mobile in general and touch screens specifically will never replace PC's for real work. Mobile devices and touch screens only really work for consumption only devices. But that also is the direction that the tech sector wants to push us. They don't want us able to create our own code. If we can create our own code, then its impossible for them to artificially cripple things so that functionality can be sold back to you.
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Actually...
There are financial applications specifically designed with mobile in mind.
Also Google drive features a nice office environment which works flawlessly on mobile (it functions really well on mobile). MS Office is also available on mobile. Now, I wouldn't do a spreadsheet on a phone (tablet is a different story), but a text document or a presentation is perfectly doable.
Things I wouldn't do on mobile is extensive graphics/audio work, movie editing, 3D modelling, coding, web design, etc. However, I
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Dude i have written documents and even spreadsheets on a tablet. Ok for quick work. But not a replacement.
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Mobile in general and touch screens specifically will never replace PC's for real work. Mobile devices and touch screens only really work for consumption only devices.
This might be true, but the market for "real work" is far smaller than the market for consumption-focused devices. Look at the prevalence of Macs and Linux machines in the workplace and then realize that the workplace market is so much smaller than the non-workplace market that the Mac and Linux percentages are still small.
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Great, so that means there are 400 million more Linux desktops! Right? /s
Sure hope not. Talk about sloppy seconds.
(Linux) ”You say you used to go HAM on that rig? Like I need to ask how many miles you got on that chassis. Reeks of defrag, Cheetos and porn. No thanks.”
(BSD) ”I’d still do her.”
Re: 400m more LInux desktops -- Year of Linux Fina (Score:2)
(Apple) Taylor Swift, no criticism possible
(Android) Hot & Sleazy Korean Hooker with blonde hair and looks exactly like that chick from blackpink... but she's more into your phonebook and wallet than you.
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I imagine just 400 million less desktops as they in general become less and less important.
I know a lot of people that have a work laptop and just use a tablet/mobile otherwise.
People that wouldn't have dreamed of not having a desktop or laptop (or even one of each) 10 years ago.
I have a desktop and a laptop, but haven't turned on either for months unless you count my steam deck (which I have docked for some light desktop work).
Re: 400m more LInux desktops -- Year of Linux Fina (Score:2)
We would not know as Linux doesnâ(TM)t tattle on its users.
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Well, I for one did install Bazzite yesterday. Not sure yet whether I like the immutability or deapise it. Time will tell.
Not surprising (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft forces computer upgrades as a giveaway to the oems. It's not for there well-being it's so the dell and HP and all of them have a chance to sell a new computer. This helps keep those oems locked into windows.
To be honest with Windows 10 I don't think they cared nearly as much because they were pretty damn sure the oems couldn't do jack shit and they were right.
The reason Windows 11 requires a computer upgrade is so they can do some of the nastier DRM and eventually lock down the platform like Apple iOS is. That's been their dream since Windows 8 but software vendors saw it coming a mile away and wouldn't have anything to do with Microsoft.
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Nearly all of Microsoft's Windows revenue
Um did you forget Microsoft Office exists? Offices a little more than twice as profitable as Windows...
Office is profitable. But that is not Windows revenue. That's Office revenue.
Re: Not surprising (Score:3)
That's one reason, but the other one they claim is for security, which is improved by features of the more recent CPUs, implemented as core isolation and VBS. That's not good enough to justify dropping support for older CPUs, though.
One of the big reasons for me to use Windows is compatibility, in particular drivers for old or exotic hardware. Using them is still possible in Windows 11 - if you disable those new security features, which you still can.
You also can't fit new CPUs in old sockets on motherboard
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If the reason was lock down, why is a 7th gen i7 with a hardware TPM 2.0 and UEFI SecureBoot not allowed Windows 11?
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Um did you forget Microsoft Office exists?
Also Azure which is in number 2 position a bit behind AWS, but not that far.
Funny thing is Microsoft runs a lot of Linux these days.
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You have forgotten that the Intel security vulnerabilities like Meltdown are a major headache when the OS maker has to put in security mitigations to deal with them. If Microsoft continued to support insecure Intel chips, then you would see continual new threats showing up that Microsoft has to address, because people with those Intel chips would blame Microsoft if their computer was infected with some piece of malware. It took until the 8th gen chips before Intel even started to address the Meltdown v
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Re: LOL (Score:3)
Audio production is another reason for me to still use Windows. I don't game.
Linux also has enormous accessibility issues for someone vision impaired, which Windows just doesn't have.
I use Lightroom classic also, which really has no open source equivalent - even on Windows, let alone Linux. No one does a better job than Adobe for printing photos, IMO. For cataloging, developing and editing, there are FOSS apps that are practical. But they don't integrate well with each other, the way LrC does. I hate that i
Re: LOL (Score:2)
Your Mom owns a Mac so there is always hope. ðY£
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Bravo getting this modded up +1 Insightful. Perfect way to cap off Pride Month!
So basically phones, then (Score:3, Informative)
The shrinking userbase doesnâ(TM)t have jack shit to do with 11â(TM)s requirements, and everything to do with women using their phones for everything now. It was silly to even attempt that argument.The writer went on a Windows rant when this shift has been predicted for 25+ years. There are kids with $500+ smartphones that have never touched a computer.
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Women need to go back to writing down their recipes in a database program on a desktop computer as God intended!
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All women*.
* DesScorp only has a sample size of one, his mother.
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Specifically women? Citation needed.
Most men still have a PC simply for gaming, if nothing else. Women don't give a shit about gaming. And the phone is the natural instrument for their Instagraming.
My wife has a nice laptop that she barely touches. She'll pull it out every once in a blue moon, but she and all the women she knows use two things primarily: their phones, and their tablets for reading. The smartphone was the perfect product for females. It fits the way they communicate. A lot of men would be fine with plain texting, email, and ma
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Most men still have a PC simply for gaming
[citation needed]
Women don't give a shit about gaming.
[citation needed]
My wife has a nice laptop that she barely touches.
Cool story bro. My wife has a nice laptop running Linux which she uses for almost everything, and our shared desktop for anything that needs real grunt.
The smartphone was the perfect product for females.
There's nothing wrong with referring to women as females it's just you sound like a Ferengi when you do it.
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Most desktop gamers are men. Women game just as hard, but rather on their phones.
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True. For those that doubt, ask the average "tech" user about the file system on their daily device, be it a "smart" phone, tablet, PC, or whatever. Some junior developers are thrown off by.... partitioning and formatting.
So, yes, 400 mil. desktops were retired and replaced with a mobile device and apps, likely for a monthly cost
I like Windows (Score:2)
Incapable? (Score:3)
This is probably why Microsoft has been aggressively pushing users to upgrade to Windows 11 after the previous version of the OS loses support -- so that its users would install the latest version of Windows on their current system (or get a new PC if their system is incapable of running the latest version).
Rather, "not allowed". Sure, my Dell XPS 420, that a friend gave me, is old, but it runs Windows 10 like a champ - though I did replace the HDD with a SSD; I imagine it would run Windows 11 just as well if not for the (arbitrary) hardware "requirements" Microsoft imposed for Windows 11. Same for my other systems. Instead of buying something new(er), I'll be switching to using my Linux Mint 22 system full-time instead - which is also old, but works great (i7-3770, ASRock Z77 Extreme3, 32 GB RAM, Samsung SSD).
Is there anything to this? (Score:3)
I can't really see any story here. "Over 1 billion" would also include 1.4 billion, and it was stated in a blog post, I don't see how that translates to "material information" that should be compared to an annual report.
Slow news day, I guess.
Re: Is there anything to this? (Score:2)
Yeah, exactly.
Linux (Score:2)
>"Windows 11 has alienated users with perfectly functional older machines, prompting some to stick with unsupported versions or abandon Windows entirely." ...by installing Linux. There has never been a better time. Funny how the entire article (and summary) glossed over that.
But fear not, the same Tom's Hardware does has a separate, earlier, article on that: https://www.tomshardware.com/s... [tomshardware.com]
No shit. (Score:2)
Windows 10 is dead, according to Microsoft. Half the billion installs out there are on hardware Microsoft deemed too old to run Windows 11.
They'll get turned off, thrown away, or someone will install Linux on them.
Not everyone is going to buy a new PC. Not everyone needs one anymore.
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You forgot about the people who simply don't care Windows 10 is not supported anymore and will keep on using that version.
Desktop computers are not that common anymore (Score:2)
You see it in the stores as well, when was the last time you saw a PC or Computer store on every corner.
Now there is a Mobile phone store on every corner instead, so it's very visible
If you think that argument is not convincing enough, you weren't born in the 80-90s or a young adult then, or you never had the need or wish for owning a PC, and why should you? Times and needs changes over the years.
On top of that, PC's are kinda crazy expensive in comparison to everything else, most people get their gaming ne
I can't imagine how... (Score:2)
...anybody lives their digital life on a smartphone
The screen is tiny and the touch keyboard sucks
I will never understand it
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Some people don't need that much screen real estate. On top of that, a lot of apps designed for the smartphone are... well... designed with the smartphone in mind and have efficient user interfaces designed for the small screen.
Then there are those who are perfectly happy doing office work on a tablet. Still a small screen, but bigger than a smartphone. The nice thing of a tablet is, like a smartphone, you can easily take it with you, and when not needed it easily disappears in a drawer. On top of that, the
is it that users are dropping windows or... (Score:3)
is it that users are dropping windows or there was a surge when covid struck (hence the specific time frame)... lots of businesses globally bought laptops, licenses for rdp, etc in addition to the existing setups... which inflated the numbers... now as people and businesses cut costs and are removing redundant licenses... there is definitely not a new user base of 400 million mac/android/unix users out there because of phones and scary windows 11 :/
The end of the desktop (Score:2)
The FuD-ders continue to be (Score:2)
Windows 11 is the most God awful mess you could imagine
Windows is Microsoft's crappiest product as far as I am concerned. Useful if you game or need some 30 year old legacy crap software
...simply adorable.
Excuse me while I continue to use this perfectly functional Windows 11 OS to code, game, chat, build and 10000 other things with zero issue and without invoking apt/rpm/yum/etc to grab 200 required packages in order to achieve this one thing or use my printer or manage my camera or fix my graphics driver or....
Adorable.
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Excuse me while I do everything you mention on my Windows 7 OS, without getting my privacy raped nor being forced to reboot at Microsoft's will.
Some games will be used on my dual boot Win 10 that is prevented from updating or acessing any of my drives that has personal data on it.
Adorable.
TempleOS! (Score:2)
It's your time to shine!