Windows 12 can’t come: people don’t want to upgrade Many stick to Win10

WC posted that Microsoft is preparing a major update to Windows, which is expected to be pushed out to WIndows 11 users this fall, but the odds are that the new version won't be called Windows 12.

During former leader Panos Panay's tenure, Microsoft chose to abandon Windows 10 and focus solely on delivering new features for Windows 11 and higher. This decision also prevented a large number of regular Windows 10 users from enjoying any of the new apps, services, and features that Microsoft had developed over the past two years.

And one of the first things the Windows leadership team did when new leader Mikhail Parakhin came on board was to reassess its stance on Windows 10 and introduce new features like Windows Copilot to Windows 10.

WC sees this as the biggest evidence that Microsoft doesn't want to launch Windows 12 this year. Microsoft wants to treat Windows 10 and Windows 11 as a single platform and is trying to simplify the process of porting certain features backwards from Windows 11 to Windows 10.

Early last December, Microsoft also announced that it would let Windows 10 users pay to get security updates after the 2025 support date ends. Microsoft knows in its heart of hearts that users won't be upgrading to Windows 11 or Windows 12 anytime soon.

In fact, the fragmentation of Windows is giving Microsoft a major headache. Currently, Windows 10 has about 1 billion users, while Windows 11 has only 400 million, and the update progress is very slow.

For most users, they don't care about new versions of Windows, preferring to wait until their existing computer is no longer fit for purpose before buying a new one. Therefore, the launch of Windows 12 is also difficult to drive upgrade enthusiasm.