"My news feed was absolutely overwhelmed this week with headlines telling me that Windows 7's market share "skyrocketed" last month, as users just said no to Windows 11. Then I realized it's the first of the month and of course all those stories are appearing because Statcounter Global Stats just released its "market share" reports for the previous month. Tech reporters cannot resist charts like this one any more than Mr. Bigglesworth can say no to a bag of fresh catnip."
"Well, like I said, "if you believe those numbers..." If you have no critical thinking skills at all, then of course you will simply write that obviously tens and maybe hundreds of millions of people have scoured the internet, found a bootleg copy of a 16-year-old operating system, and installed it on their PCs. And then you will make up a story about why that happened."
Dozens of outlets reported a sudden increase in Windows 7 traffic during September 2025 based on StatCounter Global Stats charts. StatCounter's data suggested nearly 10% of worldwide Windows PC traffic originated from Windows 7, an unsupported OS. StatCounter's measurements are described as unreliable and prone to erratic fluctuations that do not reflect true market share. A more plausible explanation is that changes in iOS 26 are confusing analytics trackers and causing misattribution of iPhone and iPad traffic to legacy Windows identifiers. Many reporters reproduced the StatCounter charts without sufficient skepticism, amplifying misleading figures and prompting unwarranted conclusions about user behavior.
Read at ZDNET
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