James Delahunty
7 Oct 2010 22:00
According to data released by research firm Net Applications, users of Microsoft's Windows operating systems still predominately use Windows XP. The data showed that XP had a market share of about 60.03 percent, down from 60.89 percent the previous month. Windows 7 gained 1.25 points to 17.10 percent while Windows Vista dropped from 14.00 percent to 13.00 percent.
Of all machines running Microsoft's Windows operating system software, approximately 66 percent were still running Windows XP, down from 76 percent before Windows 7 launched. During September, Windows Vista had a share of 14.66 percent among will Windows users, down quite a bit from its peak at 20.35 percent. Windows 7 has a 19 percent share among all Windows users.
The results are not very surprising, but it does show that the overall decline in Windows market share (albeit slight) is not being made up by the growth of Windows 7. It also shows that computer users are probably reluctant to invest in a new computer to support Windows 7 if their XP machine works just fine, or even if they could upgrade, are unwilling to risk running into compatibility and other issues.
Net Applications' data showed that MacOS X stayed stable at around 5.03 percent market share in September, and so did Linux installations at 0.85 percent. The only other operating system showing gains is Apple's iOS, at 1.18 percent.
As usual, different firms have different figures. StatCounter reports Windows XP market share at 53.99 percent, Windows Vista's market share at 16.59 percent and Windows 7's market share at 22.04 percent. The overall trend of StatCounter's figures generally reflects that of Net Applications' data.