Windows 11’s share of the desktop Windows market has climbed above 70 percent, reaching 71.5 percent, while Windows 10 has fallen to 27 percent, as the first year of Microsoft’s Extended Security Updates program for Windows 10 comes to an end and the price of continuing it doubles. The shift matters because enterprises still running Windows 10 now face a concrete bill for staying put: ESU licenses that cost $61 per device for commercial users in year one rise to $122 in year two.
The figures come from Statcounter, which derives its estimates from tracking code installed on more than 1 million sites globally. Microsoft publishes no official usage statistics for either operating system, so the numbers are estimates rather than a census. Statcounter’s data shows Windows 11 adoption has stayed relatively static since a surge at the end of last year, a wave that followed Windows 10 dropping out of support on Oct 14, 2025.
Microsoft has said the ESU price doubles every consecutive year, for a maximum of three years. That puts a year-two commercial renewal at $122 per device. Some users avoid the charge entirely: consumers can keep Windows 10 and receive free security updates by redeeming Microsoft Rewards Points or using Windows Backup to sync settings to the cloud, Windows 365 users are exempt, and consumers in the European Economic Area receive no-strings-attached security updates. Enterprises that need the updates must pay.
Esben Dochy, a principal technology evangelist at Lansweeper, told The Register that his company’s data showed enterprises were very active in moving off Windows 10 during the first year of ESU, leaving a remaining population that is much “stickier.” He expected a “small bump” around the renewal date. “The ESU price doubles for the second year, and that makes the business case for replacing the ‘we’ll get to it’ machines a lot easier,” Dochy said, while noting that “it’s likely that the steep part of the curve is behind us.”
The reasons enterprises hold on are practical. Dochy said the remaining devices are mostly ones where paying for ESU is cheaper or simpler than replacing whatever they are bolted to, and that for those machines “ESU really is the cost of doing business.” The Register notes that enterprises have plenty of reasons to keep Windows 10 hardware in place, including a piece of hardware that will not work with anything else, or a refresh cycle that does not line up with Microsoft’s push to retire old kit.
What remains unproven is how large the renewal-driven migration will be. The month’s uptick falls far short of last year’s surge, and Statcounter’s figures are estimates drawn from a tracking network rather than Microsoft’s own telemetry. Dochy’s predicted bump is a projection, not a measured outcome, and the holdouts he describes may keep paying rather than replace their hardware. The first year of ESU is ending; whether the doubled price moves the remaining Windows 10 estate is still an open question.
