I am from india. These numbers are inflated due to our population and government and health sector office pc using linux (ubuntu). These office pcs just require a chrome browser and all the work is done on the browser Nobody here cares what os they use in their office pc. I don’t see anyone here switching to linux on their personal pc other than the IT students who are forced to install kali linux. And most of them are running linux on virtualbox on windows.
Steam deck is not even officially sold here and imported ones that are sold cost 950$ for the 512 gb variant. So it is a ultra niche item here. .
People here buy desktops only for gaming/content creation, which means most households here doesn’t need/require a desktop. And these people always prefer mac or windows.
Also gaming scene here is dominated by mobile games (because gaming pcs and consoles are too expensive and we have the cheapest internet and phone prices) As for pc games it is dominated by valorant, Minecraft and gtav (fivem rp).
Edit - Many consider this a huge win. But getting market share in the office space for basic browsing and word processing inflates the numbers for actual game/app developers who wants to support linux and they will disappointed seeing the actual usage and they will abandon the linux support. Also the indian market isn’t buying laptop/desktops for browsing, they just use their phone because pc hardware is expensive and phones prices are cheap. And anyone who is buying desktops for serious tasks stick to windows and mac.
And the amount of support requests I used to get when my family was on Windows (and it was mostly but not all cracked copies, before Microsoft stopped doing anything about it) was much higher too.
Obscure hardware issues that require savviness and extensive googling is always the biggest concern with Linux, but even there, the gap is much smaller these days.
Meanwhile, the retirees who’ve used Windows all their working life, never complained even once. I guess if they were so busy with work even a day’s confusion with how the “Windows” layout for KDE Plasma differs from the actual one they were used to might be frustrating or too disruptive; not anymore though! And that was before all the Copilot mess!
Most people don’t care about Linux. They don’t need to. It’s not just fine, but probably a good thing!