Microsoft has a serious problem on its hands; and it is not about the controversies with Windows 11 Recall, although it may be related. We talk about end of Windows 10which will happen this year if the company does not back down at the last moment; And if you don’t, you can put hundreds of millions of computer users at risk.
Windows 10 end of support is scheduled for next October 14, 2025; Therefore, there are a little more than 10 months left for Microsoft to completely abandon the system and its users. It is something inevitable and what Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users have recently gone through; The big difference this time is the enormous success that Windows 10 still enjoys.
According to figures from Statcounter, Windows 10 is still present on 65.82% of computers with Windows installed, being the most used version by far; That percentage represents between 850 million and 900 million users, according to figures from Forbesusers who overnight will start using an insecure system and will become the target of hackers.
Although from next October 15, computers with Windows 10 will continue to work, You will no longer receive updates of any kind.; That includes security updates, which include patches for discovered bugs. In other words, from that moment on, if a bug is discovered in Windows 10, hackers and attackers will be able to take advantage of it knowing that Microsoft is not going to fix it. If the situation does not change, the IT sector may face an apocalyptic situation in the worst case scenario.
This is a familiar situation for Microsoft. As with Windows 10, Windows XP It was a very popular system that maintained a base of hundreds of millions of users even after the release of Windows Vista. As a result, although Windows XP support officially ended in 2009, Microsoft had no choice but to extend it until 2014, and even support some exceptions with updates until 2019, ten years after the initial plan.
Microsoft wants to prevent something similar from happening with Windows 10 at all costs, and that is why it has been with a very intrusive promotional campaignwith Windows 11 ads that take up the entire screen and cannot be disabled; Windows 10 users can only dismiss them until they appear again.
But even that has not been enough to convince users, quite the contrary: according to StatCounter, Windows 10 expanded its market share during the last two months of 2024after half a year of small falls. As it is, the share of Windows 11 does not exceed 30%, clearly insufficient to be considered the ‘leader’ of the sector.
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The privacy scandals of Windows 11, and the extreme commitment to AI on the desktop probably haven’t helped; It may not be a coincidence that the Windows 11 quota dropped at the same time as the release of the 24H2 update which brings new AI-based features.
For many users, who just want a fast and familiar system, these new features are not a compelling reason to change operating systems. Plus, it’s not like Microsoft is making it easy; Let us remember that Windows 11 has very high requirements, and that the company has publicly refused to reduce them. As things stand, Microsoft will have to make an important decision in ten months: backtrack on its plans, or abandon hundreds of millions of users to their fate.
