- Microsoft is making “behind-the-scenes platform changes” with Windows 11
- These are efforts in pre-release versions to fine-tune the fundamentals of the operating system.
- At the same time, a report suggests that a considerable number of people are fleeing Windows 11, so could this measure help change the situation?
Microsoft is beginning the process of making changes to the underlying Windows 11 platform, which is raising hope but also some fear in some respects, and comes just as we see adoption numbers for the operating system drop.
As announced with Microsoft’s latest preview build (flagged by Windows Central), Windows 11 releases on the Dev channel will now be the 26300 series.
These builds are now separate from the Beta channel, Microsoft explains, which will be the 26220 series, but the important thing is the following sentence: “Over time, we will make platform changes behind the scenes in each build, so they may have different known issues due to those changes.”
What exactly are platform changes behind the scenes? If Windows is a house (one that needs repairs in some ways, ahem), then the platform is the foundation on which it is built. This is essentially the code behind, and the modifications here are not made to add new features or anything you see overtly, but rather to smooth out the internal workings of Windows 11.
So what Microsoft aims to do here is fix that critical code and tune it to ensure better stability and performance. At least that’s in theory, and as I just mentioned, this is certainly work that’s needed for Windows 11. It’s even desperately needed.
Meanwhile, as Windows Central noted elsewhere, Statcounter figures on the global desktop operating system market show that Windows 11’s market share has fallen over the past two months, while Windows 10 has gained users. In fact, Windows 11 fell from a market share of 55.18% in October 2025 to 53.7% the following month, and has now reached 50.73% in December (the latest figures).
That’s a loss of around 4.5% in a short space of time, with Windows 10 taking most of the gains from that loss (it’s up 3%, although Windows 7 has also gained 1.3%, somehow).
Analysis: hope springs eternal (but trust is barely a thread, unfortunately)
There’s a lot to unpack here. I’ll start by noting Statcounter’s OS figures, which we shouldn’t consider as the be-all and end-all of how user numbers for Windows versions around the world break down. It’s just one source and there are complications in terms of how that data is collected. In particular, it’s very strange that Windows 7 is suddenly making considerable (relative) gains out of nowhere, suggesting that this could reflect changes in the composition of the survey to some extent (which is always a problem with these types of reports).
Still, there’s no doubt that Microsoft is concerned that Windows 11 is losing ground, let alone approaching 5% market share. Remember that Windows 10 stopped receiving (official) support a few months ago, so people ought They will flock to Windows 11, although again there is an unusual factor here. That is to say, extended support for consumers for the first time means that it is perfectly viable to stay on Windows 10 for another year (until October 2026).
So what could be happening with people abandoning Windows 11 is a combination of the effects of that availability of extended updates for the previous operating system, and all the bad press that Windows 11 has been fixing bugs lately. This, and the whole ‘Microslop’ controversy, with the software giant overly interested in pushing AI into the operating system, could be causing more people to stick with Windows 10 (or perhaps even downgrade from Windows 11 and go back to the previous generation OS).
Microsoft is obviously aware that there are issues with Windows 11 adoption and perception of the platform in general due to all of these issues. That’s why I think this latest preview is the first step Microsoft is taking toward a fix, fixing the underlying platform, as noted, and smoothing everything out.
That’s the hope I was referring to at the beginning, but there’s also the fear I mentioned. The problem is that when Microsoft tries to fix problems, sometimes it just makes things worse: a given fix can fail or cause side effects that cause other parts of Windows 11 to end up broken. So the concern is that we will see some internal issues resolved, but we will simply change those bugs to different bugs.
If you remember the introduction of the Germanium platform, which was the new underlying base for Windows 11 required for the Arm-based Snapdragon
The good news is that this time Microsoft is being smarter in its approach. We have a new platform coming to replace Germanium, called Bromine, which has changes needed for another generation of Arm laptops (Snapdragon X2 silicon and also new Nvidia CPUs).
This time, Microsoft is keeping that version separate from existing Windows 11 PCs, as Bromine development is in the (first) Canary channel, and it will be for PC Arm only when it launches early this year; It’s the 26H1 version you’ve probably already heard of.
Development for standard Windows 11 PCs will continue in the Dev and Beta channels, keeping all that separate from the Bromine platform, and the next release will be Windows 11 26H2 later this year, still on the (current) Germanium platform.
In short, non-Arm PCs won’t be moving to Bromine this year (which is why they won’t get 26H1) and will receive a modified version of Germanium (changes Microsoft is rolling out now). It’s a bit complicated and confusing, but at the same time, this approach makes sense in terms of avoiding another 24H2 bug fest.
If Microsoft can pull this off and successfully tweak Germanium without breaking anything, we should see the overall stability of Windows 11 improve throughout this year. And I’d like to hope that that’s how it will turn out; but the problem is, given the way things have gone with Windows 11 in the recent past, I don’t have any real faith or feeling behind that hope.
And I think that’s Microsoft’s real problem: it has lost consumer trust and needs to make a big effort to regain it. Microsoft should focus on doing this work on the foundations of Windows 11 and doing it well, while cooling off the relentless promotion of AI, at least for a while.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that bringing back these fundamentals is the key to the future of Windows 11, and not AI agents.
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