Windows 11’s market share growth has slowed, with its share at 53.7 percent compared to Windows 10’s 42.7 percent as of November 2025, indicating a narrowing gap rather than the expected increase, according to Statcounter. Despite the end of support for many Windows 10 versions, consumers are holding onto their devices, while businesses face slow change management processes, which delay upgrades. Esben Dochy, a principal technical evangelist at Lansweeper, noted that organizations are using Microsoft Extended Security Updates strategically, often as a bridge during the migration process. Research manager Kieren Jessop from Omdia highlighted that many consumers retain older Windows 10 machines for secondary use, affecting the adoption curve of Windows 11.
Why do we care?
Here’s the punchline: nobody cares about operating systems anymore — not customers, not Microsoft, and definitely not the market. Windows 11 adoption slowing isn’t about resistance. It’s about indifference. The OS isn’t where value lives, and customers know it.
This is why people cling to Windows 10 and pay for Extended Security Updates. It’s not worth the hassle to move unless they absolutely have to. And if you’re still building service lines around refresh cycles and OS migrations, this is your warning: that work is becoming commodity faster than you can sell it.
The strategic action isn’t to push harder on Windows 11 — it’s to move up the stack. Identity, conditional access, application governance, automation, data controls… that’s where customers actually feel impact. The OS is background noise. Treat it the way you treat the hypervisor: necessary, but not where you differentiate.
This is another signal that the MSP value proposition has to evolve. If you’re still anchored to device management and OS-level work, you’re competing in a shrinking slice of the market. If you focus on the layers above — the ones that actually drive outcomes — then it doesn’t matter what OS the customer is on. And that’s the point.