Net Applications: Windows 10 Exceeds Windows 7 Market Share

More than three years after its release, Windows 10 has exceeded Windows 7's market share. That is, more desktop computers now use Microsoft's newest and best operating system than any other operating system (according to Net Applications). The milestone is a good way for Microsoft to end in 2018, though the company had certainly hoped Windows 10 would not overtake so long as to overtake Windows 7.

The operating system was installed on more than 75 million PCs in the first four weeks, exceeding 1
10 million devices (200 million) in less than six months, 270 million after eight months, 300 million after nine months, and 350 million in less than six months 11 months, 400 million at 14 months, 500 million at 21 months and 600 million at 27 months. In September, after 37 months, 700 million devices were transferred.

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Windows 10 had a market share of 38.14 percent in November, rising 1.08 percentage points to 39.22 percent in December. Growth in Windows 10 market share has slowed since the free upgrade expired in July 2016.
Windows 8 lost 0.05 percentage points to 0.88 percent, while Windows 8.1 lost 0.14 points to 4.45 percent. Together they had a market share of 5.33 percent at the end of December. The highest value of the duo in May 2015 was 16.45 percent.
Windows 7 fell 1.99 percentage points from 38.89 percent to 36.90 percent. This has made Windows 10 the "most popular desktop OS" in December. Windows 7 already passed Windows XP in September 2012 and exceeded 60 percent in June 2015.
Windows Vista does not even register anymore (it fell below 1 percent market share at the beginning of 2017) month of the tenth anniversary). Windows XP somehow recovered by 0.31 points to 4.54 percent.

Market Share Collapse
Overall, Windows declined 0.83 percentage points to 86.20 percent in December. Windows lost its 88.51 percent share in December 2017.
Between November and December, macOS gained 0.94 points to 10.65 percent, while Linux rose 0.70 points to 2.78 percent. Compared to the previous year, macOS increased by 9.02 percent and Linux by 2.12 percent.
Net Applications uses data collected by 160 million unique visitors a month, monitoring approximately 40,000 Web sites for its customers. This means that the market share of users is measured.
If you prefer to use you should get your data from StatCounter, which displays 15 billion page views each month. The operating system numbers for December are available here.

As of December 2018, 39.22 percent of Web traffic monitored by the company was coming from Windows 10 users, while Windows 7 had fallen to 36.9 percent. As of November, those figures were 38.14 percent and 38.89 percent respectively. Meanwhile, Windows 8.1 is currently at a 4.41 percent and Windows XP still holds on to 4.45 percent of the market share. Windows 8 is at 1.3 percent, and Windows Vista is at 0.45 percent.

All versions of Windows combined made up 86.2 percent of all operating systems in use, which has not varied much over the past year. Windows started the year with an 87.79 percent share. MacOS was reported at 9.95 percent in January 2018, and ended the year at 10.65 percent. Linux had 2.09 percent and ChromeOS came in at 0.31 percent. The statistics do not break up individual versions of Windows 10, of which there have been seven major releases so far including the problematic October 2018 Update.

January 02, 2019