December 2016 Stats: Windows 10 up, IE down, Edge not going anywhere
The latest usage share reports are in and they don't give Microsoft many reasons to rejoice when it comes to the company's core products Windows 10, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge.
Windows 10 performed considerably well this month, considering that the operating system's usage share rise stopped dead in its tracks when the free for all offer expired.
In the past two months, according to Net Market Share, , Windows 10 went down from an all-high of 22.99% to 22.59% (August to October).
It is only in this month that the operating system managed to gain a noticeable share, jumping up to 23.72% from 22.59%.
If you compare the December 2016 stats to those of January 2016, you will notice that Windows 10 doubled its usage share in that time.
While the usage share of all other versions of Windows fell in the year, the drops were not as dramatic as Microsoft may have hoped them to be.
Windows XP, the aging no-longer-supported operating system fell from 11.42% to 8.63, Windows 7 fell from 52.47% to 47.17%, and windows 8.1 from 10.40% to 8.01%.
Most users cling to their operating system and it seems unlikely that they will upgrade to Windows 10 in masses anytime soon.
If you look at the statistics of StatCounter, you see a similar picture. Windows 10's usage share rose from 24.81% to 26.2% in November. Windows XP and 8.1 remained fairly stable, while Windows 7 managed to rise as well by 1.05% to 40.02%.
To be fair, this looks a lot like a recording issue more than anything else as the number of unknown devices dropped by more than 1% in November while all other operating system versions remained fairly stable.
The January to December comparison paints the same picture that Net Market Share revealed. Windows 10 managed to nearly double its usage share in 2016, while all other versions of Windows fell a bit but not extremely.
IE and Edge
So what about Internet Explorer and Edge? Internet Explorer continued its fall. The browser fell from a usage share of 43.82% in January 2016 to 21.66% in December 2016.
The browser's usage share halved in that time. While Microsoft may have hoped that its Edge browser would gain the bulk of the share, that is apparently not the case.
Edge continues to go nowhere this year. While it managed to jump from 3.07% to 5.21% this year, this is nothing to brag about considering that Microsoft is pushing the browser quite aggressively on Windows 10.
The past six months have been extremely telling, with Edge rising a mere 0.12% in that time.
StatCounter's statistics tell a different story this time. The service recorded Internet Explorer's usage share at 15.95% in January 2016, and at 9.66% in November 2016. That's not even half of what Net Market Share recorded for the browser.
The situation is even more grim for Edge which StatCounter saw at 1.82% in January, and at 3.19% in November 2016.
Closing Words
It is too early to tell if Windows 10 will make sizeable gains in the coming months, or if things will slow down to a crawl again. It is almost certain that the coming months won't change a thing for Internet Explorer's downfall, and Edge's continuance in the position it is in right now.
Now You: Where do you think will Windows 10, Edge and Internet Explorer be at the end of 2017?
They are reporting usage stats down to a hundredth of a percentage… That’s bizarre. How accurate are those decimal points going to be? If even 0.5% of computer users have spoofed their user agent, this is already greater than many of the shifts reported here. Let’s try a safer approach and just ignore the decimal points. We then see that Windows 10 went from 23% (August) to 23% (October) to 24% (November).
The overall measurement error is sure to be greater than 0.5%, though, because it’s not just coming from user agent spoofing but from various other problems associated with the measurement process. I suspect it’s in the 3-5% range. If so, those Windows 10 numbers continue to be flat through November.
(They will go up, of course, as more people purchase new computers with Windows 10 pre-installed on them.)
“They will go up, of course, as more people purchase new computers with Windows 10 pre-installed on them.” Especially with Christmas but in January/Feb there will be a decline since the New Windows users will have downloaded Firefox or Chrome.
One thing I’d like to know in the OS share is all variant/flavor of Linux together, I’m pretty sure it goes slowly up with Windows 10, I see lot of people ditching M$ and going all in for Linux and even small/mid company scrapping their Windows park for going all in for Linux.
people have been saying that for years, though sadly it seems that’s still at least a decade away depending where the industry goes. Maybe now that microsoft is more embracing linux and the mobile platform continues to grow it will be more relevant. But, I think linux distros need to be much more consumer/idiot friendly with the software to match
I wish Statcounter could explain what ‘unknown’ is and why it had been steadily climbing in the second half of the year, only to see almost half of its usage share vanish in a single month.
I’d say that the month it vanished is the month Statcounter figured out what those unknown percentages should be attributed to ?
They tweaked their detection tools, i guess
Sounds reasonable to me, however i wish we knew what it was and didn’t have to resort to speculation. :)
and apparently they marked the agian as win7 machines.
The overall trend of Win7 & unknown are greatly mirrored.
I talk to people (women) who have no idea what their browser is. Often they have no idea what the OS or CPU is.They just start the computer & go. MS likes this.
This is true. Back in the 90’s I knew a guy who was a part-time computer consultant/repairman. One day, he got a call from a woman who told him that her computer wouldn’t boot. “What type of processor do you have?”, he asked.
“I don’t know”. “What operating system do you have?”. “WordPerfect”. “You can’t be running WordPerfect, it must be Windows or DOS.” “All I know is that when I turn the computer on, WordPerfect comes up.”
He came to her house, and there he discovered that she had a 286 processor, with DOS 3.3. Someone had written a DOS autoexec file for her that invoked WordPerfect. This was the mid-90s. There were few browsers in those days,
and she wasn’t on the Internet.
The problem – she needed a new hard drive.
I and various journalists here talk to people, including women and elderly persons, who do know what they’re using. Not everyone knows, but a lot of them surprisingly do. So the amount of people who do know is increasing.
Mike and Mark, your comments clearly insinuate “women” in general are non-technical and clueless bordering on ignorant – how insulting!!! Pure insidious misogyny – you have “male ego” problems! Maybe you like to “seek out” those you can feel superior to. And what’s the “point” about something that happened back in the 1990s? WHO CARES??? And Heiman, though your comment was a little more positive and potentially encouraging, you also again have lumped women and the elderly together into some kind of “group” of people who are “lacking” and just plain aren’t “equal” somehow. How VERY sad it is that this kind of discrimination is still so prevalent in the “male dominated” society we live in. But then, look at our new “president-elect” as an example. God help us all.
I agree with most of what you said but I didn’t mean to put women and the elderly together in a non-equal group. I simply responded to Mike regarding what he said about women. I also know a lot of male people who know squat about what they’re using. I’m sorry if my post was unclear somehow, I should’ve added that part about males I wrote in the previous sentence. Believe it or not but I’m actually a male who supports equal rights for women (and LGBT and other ethnicities) and helps out wherever possible, which is why I agree with what you said (and I’m a democrat, btw). I hardly have any friends but the few I do have are women because I’ve always had trouble befriending fellow males (social anxiety-related, my psychiatrist is still figuring out the details). Also note that I’m diagnosed with an inferiority complex.
Again: I’m really sorry if my post was unclear, I hope I cleared it up with this post and that you’ll forgive me. I’ll try to be more clear from now on.
Heimen, thank you for your most kind follow up response to my previous comment. I just want to say that you are now definitely redeemed in my opinion, and I appreciate your apology! As for your possible “inferiority complex,” you have far less to feel inferior about than Mike and Mark potentially do, as you are still secure enough in your own sense of self to actually admit to an error and to apologize for it (even publicly!). In my personal experience, those who can’t admit to mistakes or aren’t capable of a gracious apology like yours are truly the ones who feel the most inferior deep down inside, which they usually can’t even admit to. So they feel the need to “act” superior to others due to their own failing in that way. In your case I’d now say you’re someone who actually feels not so much inferior but rather compassionate, understanding and respectful, based on what your words are telling me, which is something many men are not capable of in their daily lives. And sadly, someone(s) along the way probably tried to make you feel inferior for your ability to demonstrate those very good qualities as “not masculine enough” but probably more likely because they were literally not capable of it themselves. And it’s to your great credit that you do have those qualities so you should “let your light shine” and break out! Start gathering all the many good friends you very richly deserve because I guarantee that there are many people everywhere (both men and women) who admire and are drawn to those very qualities you’re demonstrating. So now I say BRAVO to you, Heimen!
Now your turn to question yourself, Christine !
Ideas:
– Self-centrism. You have been assuming that people here are from the US. “Our” President Trump. Condolences btw. But that’s not the case at all, the author of this article himself is German for instance. Many more assumptions are implicitly brought over whenever we think people share the same mental contexts as we do.
– Judgemental. In trying to denounce what was barely hinting at some kind of passively sexist mindset, but not sure, could it be that you have made some pedant assumptions yourself ?
To be more concrete, what triggers you as an American may not trigger people outside of your country because feminism has ways to be expressed and feminist reactions trigger differently depending on cultures. It’s obvious in European cultures in particular ; so you don’t think I’m talking about Arabs or Asians and get triggered again.
– Patronizing ; is it good ? Is it efficient ? Is it counterproductive ?
– Were you strengthening the weight of the insult “SJW” (social justice warrior), a category into which decent people often get lumped unfairly, preventing them to expand valuable thoughts with due credibility ?
Disclaimer : I am not judging you, I’m not angry, I’m not trying to offend you, I’m not dismissing feminism either ; I just thought maybe you could learn something. I do that for myself too. (See, that was a little patronizing for instance.)
When you remember that you have 90% market share all your worries suddenly become lighter :)
Let’s just hope that should Microsoft browsers fall, both Firefox and another non-giant company will rise instead of Google. (90% market shares for crucial tech products is getting old)
There’s an opportunity for a new browser to make it big but by default, shares should go to Chrome first and maybe Firefox.
Supertramp, thanks for your comments and food for thought. I do, however, wonder why you felt the need to “assume†that I “assume†people here are from the US. Because I said “our†in regard to “president-elect Trump?†Unfortunately, he IS our president-elect for those of us who live in the U.S. All that really signified is that I’m an American and we have been unfortunate to have had someone such as Trump elected into office. It was not directed to anyone in Germany or any other country in any way, either author or readers. Is “American” possibly be a “trigger†for you yourself by chance (self-centrism) that you felt the need to point that out? And, quite frankly put, I actually somewhat envy anyone fortunate enough NOT to be an American living in the U.S. right now and for the next 4 years!
As far as all your labeling (patronizing, judgmental, feminist, etc), I actually feel you were a bit judgmental yourself in that way. Is it now “my turn to question myself†simply because you have said it is so? You seem to have labeled me here, which is in itself a form of judgment (just as you felt I did earlier), and you have found me and my opinions clearly wanting. And that’s OK! You are entitled to your opinion, just as I am. Regardless, however, of our personal opinions, it still doesn’t change the fact that there is, in fact, misogyny, bigotry, racism, and discrimination of all forms, types, and sundry varieties rampant in the world, and in all countries of the world. It exists, no matter how much we may talk around it or wish that it were not true. It exists within humanity in general. Thankfully, so does kindness, world consciousness, philanthropy and many other positive qualities in mankind.
Nonetheless, when I feel I need to say something, I tend to say it, and readers can either take it or leave it, just as they wish. I felt strongly I needed to make my statements I made earlier (regardless of the nationality issue), and I stand by them, including my second response to Heimen. I think you appear to have possibly thought it was patronizing (another judgment?) but I meant it with full and total sincerity.
I’m also glad that you feel you did not intend to judge me (though I have to say I think you did) and that you are not angry with me and did not intend to offend me. I thank you for that, and no offense taken.
Edge is probably the worst browser ever made, so no wonder there. The “it’s a work in progress” doesn’t cut it anymore either. This is the final product already, and it’s been so for quite a while.
If you think edge is the worst browser ever made… then I take it you haven’t used many browsers but just the big popular ones.
Like what? Those text-based browsers? At least they have an excuse, it is what they advertise themselves to be. What’s Edge’s excuse? The next best browser. Zero features. A UI that’s barely usable (if what you clicked on is actually what you’ve intentionally meant to click on, then you are lucky). But a RAM hog at the same time, with many people complaining about this. I wouldn’t call it any faster than Chromium either. It’s inferior in every single way to every single browser it tries to compete with.
You like Microsoft, ok, but I can’t believe someone actually likes this abomination of a browser.
Have you even looked at those independent webkit browsers out there (e.g. midori) or the minimal browsers that have zero interface? those are fun to play with but a lot of them are completely buggy and/or useless. You claiming edge is the WORST (meaning every other browser in existence is better) is complete nonsense, mostly because you originally didn’t add any substance to your comment. Does it suck compared to Chrome and Firefox? yes, but it’s still far from the worst because it’s actually functional.
Next time it’s better saying “worst of the big browsers”. Also, I don’t like nor dislike microsoft, but i do like challenging peoples opinions on things when they don’t originally add substance :)
You’re calling a browser, that is advertised as (this is important: it calims to be something, and it actually is that thing) having a minimalistic UI, useless. But that’s not what I said about Edge. Because Edge is advertised as the fastest, battery-friendly, easy to use, lightweight browser. It’s neither of these, by far.
uh… if you’re talking about my example midori, no, I was using midori as an example of the “independent webkit browser”. the minimal and useless part was a separate reference to other browsers that claims as such. Midori is one that I wanted to love but it was wayyy too buggy, more than edge (vs like qupzilla, which is one of the most solid browsers i’ve used).
Again, I was just commenting that there are much more worse browsers out there other than edge. You should try to play with some of them, I did for a while and it’s actually fun.
The Enterprise has just recently been told that Windows 10 is stable enough for a production environment, re: Current Branch for Business. This is the beginning of the surge that Microsoft is counting on, though it is not likely to show any appreciable growth from large corporations until the 2018-2019 time frame. What happens in 2017 will be more telling as it relates to consumer grade licenses.
It looks as though the December stats did not include Black Friday and Cyber Monday consumer purchases (or did it?). The 2016 year end holiday sales will show in January 2017 and that should be an up blip for W10. If there is not a decent jump in W10 consumer licenses, Microsoft and their OEM Partners are going to be in a state of total confusion. I think they are expecting a significant jump.
If Microsoft’s expectations are not met with the consumer market, I think they are more likely to go for the stick rather than the carrot. I think they are fed up with the lack of love they received after the GWX campaign.
On the other hand though: various big organizations/political departments are switching to Chromebooks and/or Linux. Schools are also switching to Chromebooks big time. So I’m not so sure that a lot of companies will switch to Windows 10 in 2018-2019. Sure, the amount will be enough to make MS happy but I’m also 100% sure that quite a few companies will also switch to Chromebooks (or Linux, or both, or a combination of Windows and Chromebooks). Also, some might still stick with XP. For example, the city council of my city still uses XP and pays for the extended support and they said that they have no plans to ditch XP within the next 5 years (they did give iPads to some politicians though).
I wonder how long it will be before Win 10 is seen as the final / finished product ? 3 years, 4 years ……
Win10 share will continue to rise slowly as new “devices” sell. However, PC sales are declining so Win10 is becoming less of a priority for MS. Enterprise and the cloud is now MS’s bread-and-butter. Edge usage will probably rise slightly with Win10 usage.
I believe the future of personal PC’s is in smart phone computers – like the Galaxy Note 7. MS’s problem is that Win10 was designed to run on everything from PC’s to smart phones – in my view, that’s inefficient. Apple’s iOS was designed just for tablets and phones – and Apple has an in-place ecosystem to support their devices. think Steve Jobs was very far-sighted on this issue. I think MS is vulnerable.
In reality PC sales are actually quite constant. It’s the mobile/tablet sales which are (or rather were) at a constant growth which made the sales graph look like the PC sales were slowing down. That, plus the fact that a mobile/tablet is obsolete after a year, max. two, compared to a PC which can easily last for even ten years.
“I believe the future of personal PC’s is in smart phone computers – like the Galaxy Note 7”
I doubt it since there’s too much work I do that I can’t do on a phone. The need for desktops and laptops will always be there, but they just don’t have the dominance they once had.
Gartner Says Worldwide PC Shipments Declined 5.7 Percent in Third Quarter of 2016
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161011006705/en/Gartner-Worldwide-PC-Shipments-Declined-5.7-Percent
Worldwide PC shipments totaled 68.9 million units in the third quarter of 2016, a 5.7 percent decline from the third quarter of 2015, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc. This was the eighth consecutive quarter of PC shipment decline, the longest duration of decline in the history of the PC industry.
Eight quarters? Would that indicate the Win 8/.1 release? It’s expected such fluctuation whenever a new version of Windows releases. Except 10, which was released as an upgrade. They’re fairly constant.
On the other hand, tablets and even phones are doing quite bad for a little over a year. Whoever means work, will not do it on a tablet/smartphone, that’s for sure.
I’m doing my work partly on my BlackBerry Passport. No problem at all. Police officers here are switching from BlackBerry to Apple (iPhones) to do all of their work on. Various marketeers out on the streets here carry tablets to do their work on (usually iPads). The city council of my city is using iPads (and a few Samsung tablets). My dad has to use his BlackBerry Leap for work (he’s a mailman but he has to use his company’s smartphone app to record everything and stuff). And I can name more examples if you want.
So actually, work *is* being done more and more on tablets/smartphones.
Why is Firefox and Chrome being blocked in windows 10 again ? I downloaded Firefox 50.0.1 and the next day error message incompatible program for Firefox. It won’t start up any more.Windows did this before …………! any answers ?
user error, no issue on my end
If it was a user error, then why did Mozilla claim to have fixed the issue on *their* end in 50.0.2?
Download ADWcleaner and Junkware Removal Tool from Malwarebytes. Run a scan of each. Let them clean out any crap that might be preventing Firefox from running. Also, after you run the two programs (pretty quick scans) and clean out any malware that is found, you should uninstall your current Firefox and download 50.0.2 from Mozilla, and reinstall it. If you still have issues, Windows might have some corrupted files. Open an elevated command prompt and type sfc /scannow then hit Enter. Let it run. If it finds and fixes corrupt files and your system is clean, Firefox should run normally.
Fixed on 50.0.2
Regarding Edge:
For the life of me, I don’t know why it is taking so long for them to push out extensions. I get they want to make sure they are safe and secure, but it sure seems like it takes a long time for new extensions to be pushed out to the “stable ring” crowd. Wasn’t it back in September that Edge developers tweeted how uBlock Origin, Turn Off The Lights, and Ghostery were coming “soon” to Edge? Well, it’s officially December and only one of the three (the one probably least desired BTW) is available in the Windows store.
Edge has some potential, but no speeding up the extension approval time is killing it.
It’s not about approval those addon are buggy has the hell and are in Alpha Stage for most of them and I suspect that some devs will throw the towel before having a release version since the market in tiny for Edge.
uBlock Origin is available for Edge, albeit in alpha stage: https://github.com/nikrolls/uBlock-Edge#edge
a friend of mine being sysadmin in a medium sized company is living a nightmare since company management was allured by commercials to adopt win10. All that started in june, now after months of fight with that wonderful O.S. management was forced to go back and restore previous O.S. Just imagine the situation, costs and troubles, recompile software, network… now they are considering taking legal action after not even one of those promises made by that fantastic O.S. was kept.
So….. win10 is not mature yet, to say the least, to be used in production environment, may be a “great” OS for chatting, surfuing web, social network, personal productivity and…. gather users data but do not adopt it for serious work seems the real situation.
Does any of you ghacks.net readers have experienced win10 in production environment?
As far as I’m concerned win10 will stay out of the door in those places where I am sysadmin.
Yes, I have and i was a disaster because our antivirus software practically crippled the system causing the start menu to crash (though windows 8 seems fine). While I do think windows 10 does add many benefits to production value, I agree that it isn’t solid enough for the business level, along with the windows store, UWP, and cortana being included. When UWP becomes more mature that might change, but the windows store and cortana still seems too consumer level.
“win10 is not mature”
It’s not really about being mature it’s more about being half-baked since the beginning, M$ don’t do since years now any real beta testing for Win, the beta tester are the users and the alpha tester are the insiders and nobody listen the Insiders…
So release after releases the bugs pile up more and more as new half baked features are added… M$ just think very short term about the money they can make without investing in the quality and without listening to what the users really need and want.
Many important bugs from Win10 are now 2 years old, nobody aware of those bugs today expect them to be fixed, M$ only fixe the bugs that are very visible to the “public” but bugs about network issues, shares, protocols are ignored since there is not enough qualified engineers to fix them.
To many spaghetti code is wrote each months that add new bugs to be fixed or not depending of their visibility and this spaghetti code is not really tested at all… That’s the reality !
MS seems really intent on putting more features rather than bug fixes for Windows 10. I have used Windows 10 for while, and every once and while I regret upgrading from Windows 7 whenever I run into numerous bugs. I recently built a computer for my parents putting Windows 7 on it and then upgrading to Windows 10 b/c I don’t want to deal with reinstalling Windows 10 when Windows 7 EOL arrives. When you google troubleshooting in the MS forum, you have long threads of people complaining about the bugs, but the MS shrills just cut and paste generic troubleshooting responses which don’t help anyone.
Despite all the press about Windows 10 being more resource efficient and such, Windows 7 was noticeably faster, little thing like GUI responsiveness and basic Windows 10 bugs things like wifi sometimes not automatically connecting on start up and such are beyond annoying. MS is putting all their resources in expanding UWP and it shows b/c everything else is either stagnant or a step backward from Windows 7. If Windows 7 had more years of support, I wouldn’t bother with Windows 10.
Hmm. Looks like Edge is scaling at the same rate as Windows 10 — Edge has a share that is about 20% of Windows 10, and that seems to be remaining constant for the entirety of the last year.
It’s an interesting little correlation, and shows that Edge isn’t gaining any ground at all. A constant 80% of Windows 10 users are switching to a different browser.
I had constant little problems with Edge so I seldom use it anymore. Home user, btw. Just got tired of spending time messing with Edge. Now my main browser problems are web sites that Adblock, Privacy Badger, and UblockOrigin have trouble with. Even LastPass won’t work with eBay anymore. I just don’t know how you folks with bunches of addons even get any work done.
There is a lot to be said for running the most up to date Win10 OS. It’s safer, quicker, and updates itself. I’m using Edge more and more each day because it loads so quickly but Chrome is my default browser.. also have Firefox, all of them current and up to date. It would have been foolish for me not to take advantage of the previously offered free Win10 Update for 7 & 8 users. Happy as a lark…and updated for life.
But its not! Windows 7 with EMET is more secure/safe than Win 10 – recent testing.
Win10 with EMET is better than Win7 with EMET!