gs.statcounter[.]com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/worldwide
Stats are based on aggregate data collected by Statcounter on a sample exceeding 5 billion pageviews per month collected from across the Statcounter network of more than 1.5 million websites. Stats are updated and made available every day, however are subject to quality assurance testing and revision for 45 days from publication.
You can also view stats for different OSes, e.g. Android vs. Windows, &/or by Android version etc. I think it's interesting that Win11 growth or adoption seems pretty close to what was measured for Vista & Win8/8.1 at the same point, roughly one year after release. Historically, in *terms of popularity*, the pattern seems to be good, bad, good, bad, good, bad, good, bad, With Win98, Win ME, WinXP, Vista, Win7, Win8/8.1, Win10, Win11. The less popular versions generally had new tech & design principles that took Microsoft another version to get right. Win11 showcases Microsoft's attempts to rewrite parts of Windows that have remained the same for years, while the hardware requirements / restrictions *may* have been based more on Marketing, as a move to boost sales of new PC & laptops. That's mainly where Microsoft makes money off Windows nowadays, since they made the Win10 upgrade free. The new requirements are a must if you enable the memory virtualization security stuff, but since that still hurts performance, even on the latest hardware, I'm not sure it will ever see mass adoption outside of corporate use. Maybe they were hoping that with the performance hit being reduced on the latest hardware, more people would use it than did on Win10?
At any rate, ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley gives her take on where Microsoft is headed with Windows overall, though it doesn't say much about what happens to or for us, the individual users.
zdnet[.]com/article/whats-next-for-windows-cloud-integration-ad-and-subscription-powered-devices/