There's no realistic competition because the amount of work to switch your OS ecosystem, especially for businesses, is huge. So the product doesn't have to be good, you can just slam ads in the Start menu or whatever.
https://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Munich-Plans-to-D...
Apple doubled their marketshare since the M1 chip came out.
You can just go out and buy laptops from multiple OEMs with Linux preinstalled, and it’ll run all your business apps (Slack, Google Workspaces, Zoom, Spotify, etc, everything works). That would have been unheard of in 2010.
You can even play a huge number of Windows games on Linux, and the most popular PC “console” is a Linux system from Valve (with another releasing this year). Microsoft has no control over the PC gaming market like it did back in the heyday of DirectX.
I think Microsoft should be all-hands-on-deck trying to build reasons for customers to use Windows.
I personally think Windows 11 is pretty good and is the most “going in the right direction” version we’ve seen in a long time, but it could be better. Yeah there have been missteps but the windows team does seem more free to just add stuff they wish had been in Windows for years but never got approval to go for.
OEM laptops with Linux distributions pre-installed are only available on online shops known to HN/Reddit demographics.
edit: if it doesn't translate well, I'm just fucking with you
Apple has close to 20% of new PC marketshare globally which is too much to represent only the high end of the market.
Lenovo and Dell are not some fly by night unknown PC manufacturers.
Combined with some digital independence movements outside the US, I have some hopes that Windows monopoly starts to crumble.