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Windows 10 Barely Moves the Needle on Global Market Share


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Windows 10 Barely Moves the Needle on Global Market Share

Data shows Windows 10 records minor share increase

New data provided by NetMarketShare shows that while Windows 10 continues to be the leading choice for desktop computers across the world, it barely moved the needle on global market share numbers last month.

Windows 10 increased its share from 45.73% to 45.79%, despite the arrival of the May 2019 Update.

Microsoft started the rollout of Windows 10 May 2019 Update, or version 1903, in late May. Last month, the company made it available for all seekers on Windows Update, meaning all users are allowed to download the update with a manual check for updates.

Windows 7, whose support comes to an end in January 2020, dropped from 35.44% to 35.38%.

The 2009 Windows operating system will go dark on January 14, 2020, so Microsoft now recommends users to upgrade to Windows 10 in order to continue to receive updates. The transition from Windows 10 to Windows 7, however, happens at a rather slow pace, so right now, more than 3 in 10 PCs out there still run Windows 7.

Windows XP going dark

Windows 8.1, which is the third Windows version that still receives support, actually increased its share from 3.97% to 4.51%.

At the same time, macOS 10.14 declined from 5.34% to 5.31%.

The good news is that Windows XP, the operating system that no longer receives updates since April 2014, is going down at a faster pace and has now reached 1.81% share. Windows XP is mostly used on devices in various organizations and enterprises across the world because of compatibility reasons and the high costs of upgrades to newer Windows.

Linux, which has long been considered the main alternative to Windows, is now running on 1.55% of the desktop computers out there, according to the same source.

Below is a summary of the June 2019 market share figures:

  Windows 10 Windows 7 macOS 10.14 Windows 8.1
May 2019 45.73%  35.44%  5.34% 3.97%
June 2019 45.79%  36.38%  5.31%  4.51% 
 

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Source: Windows 10 Barely Moves the Needle on Global Market Share (Softpedia - Bogdan Popa)

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Windows by the numbers: Upgraders press Pause

After finally passing the 50% mark in May, Windows 10 stalled in June. Windows 7 held steady despite the short window left before support runs out.

Apparently, just six months before Windows 7 hits retirement, users decided to take a break from migrating to the latest shiny, Windows 10.

 

According to web metrics company Net Applications, anyway.

 

The chances that everyone pressed Pause in June are about the same as pocketing a million from a scratch-it. In other words, highly unlikely. But that's what Net Applications claimed Monday.

 

Windows 7's share of all personal computers barely budged in June, remaining at 35.4%, and its portion of the PCs running Windows stayed put at 40.1%. (The second number was significantly larger than the first because Windows does not power every personal computer; in June, Windows ran 88.3% of the world's machines. All but a miniscule fraction of the rest ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS.)

 

Meanwhile, Windows 10's numbers were almost as immune to change. The operating system's share of all PCs reached 45.8%, an increase of less than one-tenth of a percentage point. Windows 10's share of Windows PCs did not move at all, sticking with 51.8%. (The stubbornness of the share of Windows overall was an artifact of rounding.)

 

So, what's going on? Did Windows users, especially commercial customers tasked with getting off Windows 7 before security updates dry up, really stop doing — what they'd done the month before — upgrading from 7 to 10?

Who knows? As Computerworld has noted numerous times when discussing analytics data that tries (pretends, some would argue) to reveal Microsoft's secrets, the whole process can be an impenetrable black box. Everything must be inferred, whether X gained when Y declined, or in this case, movement stalled.

 

It may simply be the data itself; Net Applications has visibility only on sites it monitors for clients. Its user share numbers are extrapolations at best, and so far from definitive to be laughable. But failing Microsoft's own data — which it has, thanks to the telemetry embedded within Windows — it's the best outsiders have. (Virtually every estimate of OS or browser share is based on the same principles used by Net Applications.)

What's important, as always, is to keep an eye on the longer-term trends. If any of this is worthwhile, it's the over-time movements of an OS. That's why, even in a month which stumps easy analysis, Net Applications' Windows numbers can provide insight.

Windows 10 still accelerates

By Net Applications' numbers, Windows 10's growth still shows signs of speeding up. The average per-month change over the past 12 months has been +0.84 of a percentage point. But over the last 6 months, the average climbed to +1.1 points, representing an increase of about 24%.

 

However, Windows 7's decline has not kept pace. Rather than accelerate, it has slowed. While Windows 7's average per-month movement over the last 12 months has been -0.53 percentage points, the 6-month average was only -0.25 points, or less than half. If Windows 7's fall was speeding up, the 6-month average decline should be larger not smaller than the 12-month.

 

That's why Windows 7's forecast — based, as always, on the operating system's 12-month average change — now pegs its January 2020 user share at 35.7%, nearly half a point higher than the prognostication of the month before. (Windows 7 will exit support Jan. 14, 2020.) That's a lot of PCs destined to go without security updates.

Meanwhile, Windows 10 should stand at about 58% of all Windows installations when the older OS drops off support, a decrease of approximately two points from the early-June forecast. A year later — January 2021 — Windows 7 and Windows 10 will be at 28.5% and 69.5%, respectively.

 

Elsewhere in Net Applications' June reporting, the user share of macOS slipped by more than a tenth of a percentage point to 9.2%, the lowest mark for Apple's desktop operating system in over a year. macOS has lost user share for three straight months. Linux's user share climbed by almost two-tenths of a point to 2.1%, while Google's Chrome OS stayed flat at 0.4%.

 

 

 

Source: Windows by the numbers: Upgraders press Pause (Computerworld - Gregg Keizer)

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BimBamSmash

How come macOS users are taking the downgrade route this year? Something wrong with the 10.14 that's not being making the heardlines yet?

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