Dell estimated the number of PCs that don’t upgrade to Windows 11 at 500 million
By ForGeeks
About 500 million Windows 11-compatible PCs continue to run Windows 10, Dell said.
User adoption of Windows 11 is slower than migration to Windows 10. Despite the end of standard support for the decade-old OS, Windows 10 remains popular with home users and the enterprise sector. According to Dell COO Jeffrey Clarke, about 500 million PCs could upgrade to Windows 11, but don’t.
Dell data on upgrade rates
In his third-quarter earnings conference call, Clark noted that he was talking about the entire PC market, not just Dell PCs. He added that about 500 million more machines more than four years old are unable to run Windows 11 at all because of stricter hardware platform requirements.
Clark cited those volumes as a potential boost to sales of new PCs and AI-enabled models, but warned that the PC market will remain “relatively flat” in 2025.
The popularity of Windows 10 and the impact of Windows 11 requirements
This is the first time a major computer maker has estimated the scale of the failure to upgrade to Windows 11 to be in the hundreds of millions of devices. Microsoft’s stringent requirements for processors and security modules have meant that many systems released over the past decade are not formally supported by the new OS.
It was expected that some users would stay with Windows 10 because of compatibility limitations, but Dell’s data shows that the decade-old OS is holding on to a much larger segment of the market.
Microsoft estimates
Dell’s estimate comes a week after Windows chief Pawan Davuluri said that “nearly a billion people rely on Windows 11.” Microsoft didn’t specify what exactly is meant by that figure, as the company had previously used monthly active device statistics.
