Every month, Statcounter publishes market share figures for the various Windows versions, but this month’s figures are something special. In September 2025, an ancient Windows version that hasn’t been updated in years saw a non-trivial bump in users.
We’re talking about Windows 7. Yup, you read that right. Windows 7 was very popular with users during its time, much like Windows XP before it and Windows 10 after it, but it came to an end with its final security update in January 2020. Since then, Windows 7 has been unprotected against newly discovered security vulnerabilities.
And yet, for some reason, Statcounter now shows that the global market share of Windows 7 rose sharply from 3.59 percent in August to 9.61 percent in September. During that same period, Windows 11 lost a negligible amount (from 49.08 to 48.94 percent) while Windows 10 lost a lot more (from 45.53 percent to 40.5 percent).
So, what’s behind the huge jump in Windows 7 users? It’s mainly due to Asia, where Windows 7 market share shot up from 5.64 percent in August to 18.67 percent in September! Before that, it was even lower at 2.32 percent in July. How’s that for a comeback?
One caveat here: Statcounter provides no explanation for this unusual surge, so these figures should be treated with a certain amount of skepticism. Could there be a measurement error involved?
Further reading: I’m sticking with Windows 10 even after it dies in October. Here’s how I’m doing it
This article originally appeared on our sister publication PC-WELT and was translated and localized from German.