December Market Share, XP Drops, Windows 7 Gains
Windows XP stays on top of the operating system market share while Windows 7 continues to gain grounds. The latest market share statistics are in and they confirm recent trends.
Windows XP is still the top operating system with a market share between 51% (Statcounter) and 57% (Hitslink). That's a comfortable lead as it is still twice as much as the market share of Windows 7 which the services see between 24% and 19%.
A closer look at the past year reveals tendencies. Windows XP loses between 1% and 2% market share per month, while Windows gains about the same amount each month.
Windows Vista, the successor of Windows XP and predecessor of Windows 7, dropped as well from a market share between 22% and 17% to between 16% and 12%.
Windows 7 managed to surpass the highest market share of Windows Vista in one year's time, and it is likely that recent trends will continue. Windows XP and Vista will continue to lose market share to Windows 7. Linux and Mac OS did not really change in that time. Only Statcounter sees a 1% increase of Mac OS.
Lets take a look at the browser market share as well. Microsoft's Internet Explorer is the browser with the highest market share. Statcounter recorded a drop below 50% to 48% in November while Hitslink sees the browser at 58% in November 2010 followed by Mozilla Firefox with a market share between 22% and 31%, Google Chrome between 9% and 13%, Safari between 4% and 5% and the Opera browser at 2%.
Firefox does not seem to be able to get any more market share, as it is showing a constant share in the last twelve months. The only two browsers showing movement at all are Microsoft's Internet Explorer (downwards) and Google Chrome (upwards).
It is very likely that current trends will continue both when it comes to operating systems and web browsers. On the operating system side, Windows 7 will continue to gain market share while XP and Vista will continue to lose it.
Internet Explorer's market share will drop further in coming months while Chrome's will rise.
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Windows 7 is just like Vista. Tons of features removed and broken. Poor usability. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_7 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_Vista. Unnecessary GUI changes. It would be much more intelligent (and probably much harder to do) innovation to improve Windows without changing the GUI. But changing the cosmetics has mainly one purpose: to conceal, that nothing really new happened. It does have improvements in security, graphics, networking but basic UI usability of core features like Windows Explorer, taskbar, WMP is screwed up.
Windows 7 will acquire before its first service pack.
The statistical results provided show nothing other than the fact Windows XP is no longer an option when purchasing a new computer. The statistical probability that more computers were sold with Windows 7 installed within the noted time frame than computers sold with Windows XP may be a more accurate perception of OS market share.
Windows shouldn’t display that this is not genuine window. At least they are getting reputation from it.