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Windows Microsoft Operating Systems Stats

Windows 8 Passes Vista, Hits 5.1% Market Share 285

Posted by timothy from the we-can-finally-sleep-nights-again dept.
An anonymous reader writes "With the first half of 2013 now over, Windows 8 continues to grow its share steadily but slowly, while Windows XP and Vista decline. In fact, Windows 8 has now passed the 5 percent mark, as well as surpassed the market share of its predecessor's predecessor, Windows Vista. The latest market share data from Net Applications shows that June 2013 was an impressive one for Windows 8, which gained 0.83 percentage points (from 4.27 percent to 5.10 percent) while Windows 7 fell 0.48 percentage points (from 44.85 percent to 44.37 percent)."
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Windows 8 Passes Vista, Hits 5.1% Market Share More

Windows 8 Passes Vista, Hits 5.1% Market Share

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  • Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Insightful)

    by vikingpower ( 768921 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @05:05AM (#44151859) Homepage Journal
    Not that much of an achievement. If that is all they can announce... Sounds to me like the German Army bulletins toward the end of 2nd World War.

    • Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dingen ( 958134 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @05:10AM (#44151883)

      And mind you: it's not passing Vista's market share as it was in October 2007 (equally 10 months after launch as Windows 8 is now). It's just passed Vista's *current* market share.

      No consumer-oriented version of Windows has ever seen such a slow adoption as Windows 8 is showing now.

      • Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Interesting)

        by RogueyWon ( 735973 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @05:23AM (#44151927) Journal

        How did the takeup of ME compare? That was billed as the "consumer oriented" OS at the time (while 2000 was billed as the "business product").

        If we're at the kind of point where comparisons to ME feel appropriate, then Win8 really is in trouble. At least with ME, there was always a strong sense that it was never intended as much more than a short-term stopgap. Win8, on the other hand, has been pushed very hard as "the future".

        • Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:4)

          by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @05:54AM (#44152015) Homepage Journal

          How did the takeup of ME compare? That was billed as the "consumer oriented" OS at the time (while 2000 was billed as the "business product").

          If we're at the kind of point where comparisons to ME feel appropriate, then Win8 really is in trouble. At least with ME, there was always a strong sense that it was never intended as much more than a short-term stopgap. Win8, on the other hand, has been pushed very hard as "the future".

          me might have done comparatively well. pc sales were in a huge upswing back in those days.

        • Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Interesting)

          by nukenerd ( 172703 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @08:35AM (#44152649)

          How did the takeup of ME compare? That was billed as the "consumer oriented" OS at the time ...... At least with ME, there was always a strong sense that it was never intended as much more than a short-term stopgap.

          As I recall in those days, queues of people camped on PCWorld's doorstep for a few days before each new Windows release (like they do for Apple stuff today).

          I do not recall ME being regarded as a stopgap. The name "ME" even suggested it was forward looking. True, those who knew better recognised it as W95 on a Zimmerframe - one last fling by MS to extract money from the consumer market with a pointless upgrade. I never ran ME, but understand that it was actually worse than 98.

          Also, there was no gap to stop. Windows NT was already available and had been runnable on entry-level PCs' for some time (and did, in the form of XP just a year later). It was games compatibility that kept the crappy 95/98/ME bloodline going, but MS needed to tell the games writers to port their stuff to NT/XP sooner or later; and they should have done it sooner.

          • Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:4, Interesting)

            by RogueyWon ( 735973 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @08:52AM (#44152767) Journal

            From the gamer's point of view, the problem with NT was its complete lack of directx functionality. This was addressed by 2k. But games developers could hardly be blamed for focussing on Win98 when MS's own tools for gaming weren't there on NT. Uptake of 2k was slower than it could have been, primarily due to third party driver issues that caused stability and performance issues for many games. That one's perhaps slightly harder to pin on MS.

            I followed what is, I think, a very typical path for gamers at the time. I hung on to 98 until 2k service pack 2 was released, at which point most of the problems related to gaming under 2k had been addressed. I never made a conscious decision to move to XP, but a couple of years later, when I bought a new PC that came with it installed, there was no reason to move back to 2k.

          • Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:4, Informative)

            by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @09:26AM (#44153013) Homepage Journal

            I never ran ME, but understand that it was actually worse than 98.

            No, I don't think it was worse, I just think it was rushed.
            Me deprecated many of the VxD drivers used with Windows 98, and needed updated WDM drivers that didn't require real mode. Also, it came with generic USB drivers, and USB was just becoming widely popular, but with lots of "almost-compatible" devices on the market, requiring special drivers. The manufacturers weren't ready, and the result was highly unstable Me systems, especially when using USB or older hardware.

            But they felt they HAD to rush it - Windows 2000 was coming.
            Windows 2000 really was the solution, but Microsoft did the big mistake of not marketing it towards consumers. Then XP came, which basically was a dumbed down 2000 with updated graphics, and it took the world with storm. But boy, was it buggy before SP1. Anyone sane would run 2000 instead.

      • Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Insightful)

        by wvmarle ( 1070040 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @05:54AM (#44152021)

        What may be more notable, is the staying power of Win XP.

        Win XP is with 37% market share not far behind the 44% of Win 7 (two major versions ahead of XP, and released almost four years ago by now). If all computers that had been replaced would have received Win 7, the market share of Win 7 compared to Win XP should be much higher: if the average lifetime of a PC is five years, some 80% of the computers that were in use back in summer 2009 have been replaced by now. Yet newer-than-XP versions of Windows are far behind that number.

        And while it's market share is falling, it's falling only slowly, with a 0.5% loss over the past month. And I really can not imagine just 0.5% of computers are being replaced in a month - at an average lifespan of 5 years for a PC there should be nearly 1.7% replacement rate per month. So is it that XP computers are all just old ones that are not being replaced? Or is it that XP is being installed on new computers? Both are about as unbelievable, yet I can't think of another reason XP's market share is falling so much slower than the computer replacement rate.

        • Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:4, Insightful)

          by dingen ( 958134 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @06:02AM (#44152049)

          Probably both. People are holding on to a machine that works because of the economic situation and a lot of people still prefer XP to anything else and install it on brand new systems. I guess it will be until 2014 when support is dropped that the numbers will show some real drops, although it will be mainly from businesses as they are the ones who care about support in the first place. I doubt home users will think a lack of updates is a bad thing.

          • Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Informative)

            by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @07:57AM (#44152403) Homepage

            I've got lots of perfectly good hardware (scanners, printers...etc) that never received a Windows 7 driver. I have to keep at least one XP machine around just for that reason.

            • Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Interesting)

              by ArcherB ( 796902 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @08:10AM (#44152487) Journal

              I've got lots of perfectly good hardware (scanners, printers...etc) that never received a Windows 7 driver. I have to keep at least one XP machine around just for that reason.

              My nephew is staying at my place for the summer and brought an old Vista machine. Rather than run a network cable to his room, I gave him a USB wireless-N adapter. He tried for a couple of weeks to make it work while a cat-5 cable ran across my office floor into his room. The other day, he decided to install Linux on the system after using my machine every time his crashed. We downloaded Mint and installed it. Once it was up and running, I plugged in the USB adapter, unplugged the network cable, punched in my wifi password and BAM! He was on the network and reading reddit. (I guess reddit is what kids do these days).

              Anyway, the point is that all the drivers you may need are probably included in some of the latest Linux distro's out there. You might want to try booting off a live CD and try it out. If you're not a gamer, I see no reason to be stuck running XP or any other Windows based system.

              • Anyway, the point is that all the drivers you may need are probably included in some of the latest Linux distro's out there.

                I have a machine which runs Vista because it won't run anything else. Has R690M chipset which the free driver doesn't work on, and which fglrx never supported. The drivers I need are not included in any Linux distribution out there — they don't exist, because ATI lied about their commitment to Open Source, and their commitment to Linux as well.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by wbr1 ( 2538558 )
            It's not just the economic situation. I have an old P4 box running XP that is fine for most browsing and email. If you have the most common needs, there is no need for new hardware.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          > So is it that XP computers are all just old ones that are not being replaced? Or is it that XP is being installed on new computers? Both are about as unbelievable, yet I can't think of another reason XP's market share is falling so much slower than the computer replacement rate.

          Both. Some corporate images are still based on XP, and XP compatibility is required when purchasing new hardware. I know this is unbelievable, but there was a similar situation with NT4.0, which was used way post the point wher

        • Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Informative)

          by KingMotley ( 944240 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @07:21AM (#44152265) Journal

          Or it could be that the statistics are being pulled from sources that have unusually slow adoption rate. I typically check the statistics that I see come from netmarketshare and the like from a couple other sources, and I've always noticed that they lag considerably from both another source, and my own statistics from visitors from my client's web sites.

          For example, my statistics show 6.6% for Windows 8 , 7.88% for Vista, 30.28% for XP, and 54.69% for Windows 7.
          netmarketshare shows 5.1% for Windows 8, 4.62% for Vista, 37.17% for XP, and 44.37% for Windows 7.
          My other source shows 12.7% for Windows 8, 7.2% for Vista, 7.9% for XP, and 66% for Windows 7.

          There is quite a bit of difference between the three, but ntmarketshare typically seems to poll from placed that hang on to their systems longer than most, I'm guessing some very large businesses as their primary source, which skews their numbers.

          • I should note that my other source is taken from mainly home PC's, so adoption rate is typically quicker than the average.
            netmarketshare seems to favor large businesses, so their adoption rate is abysmal.
            And my own client's statistics is a blend of the two.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jbolden ( 176878 )

            Net statistics bias towards heavy internet usage which biases towards heavy usage which bias towards frequent upgraders. You want data on all machines you have to count the people who use their computer once every 2 weeks or only do one or two things with it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbolden ( 176878 )

          I would suspect that XP users have well below average replacement rates. The XP people are the people who keep their computers for 10 years on the home / small business front. On the corporate front those are companies that haven't been spending on desktop infrastructure and still have XP licenses. The ones that are probably going to have a rough transition now that Microsoft is finally EOL XP and forcing them onto Win7.

        • I've got XP installed under VirtualBox on my Mint LMDE XFCE desktop. I installed XP because I've got a retail license which I bought in 2001. For what I need Windows for (a few work-related websites that need IE and for a work-format CV that needs to be in Word format), it is good enough. I do not feel inclined to buy another copy of Windows that I only need to boot into once a month or so. I especially do not feel inclined to buy a version of windows that has been as comprehensively slated a Windows 8! (I'

        • at an average lifespan of 5 years for a PC there should be nearly 1.7% replacement rate per month.

          When was that replacement rate calculated? When Americans still had money?

      • Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Informative)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) * on Monday July 01, 2013 @08:02AM (#44152417) Homepage Journal

        No consumer-oriented version of Windows has ever seen such a slow adoption as Windows 8 is showing now.

        That's a worthless measure of success for Windows. 99.9% of copies are sold on new PCs or as part of bulk licences in businesses. The former is no indication of Windows 8 acceptance, merely of new PC sales. The latter is no indication of Windows 8 acceptance, merely IT spending and the amount of lag between release and companies rolling out new operating systems.

        Conversely because almost 100% of Windows 7 users installed SP1 that doesn't mean SP1 was a huge success, merely that it was put forwards as a critical update and people had no reason to reject it.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dingen ( 958134 )

          You say it like Microsoft is a victim of the circumstances. But some people in the industry are saying PC sales and IT spending is down because of Windows 8.

          • Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:4, Insightful)

            by nanoflower ( 1077145 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @08:28AM (#44152595)
            I bet many of those same people in the industry said that PC sales were down before Windows 8 was released because people were waiting for Win8 to be released. People in the industry can be wrong just about as often as the average Slashdot reader when it comes to why sales are down. Everything from the economy, to having PCs that are good enough there's no need to upgrade. to not liking Win8 (or the comments people have made about it without having seen it/tried it) play a part. Which one is the most important is unknown. My own guess would be a combination of the economy and current PCs being good enough but it's just a guess. I've industry analysts say one thing about where things are heading and why. Then a few months later they completely change their story. Which just shows that without some clear indicator of why things are happening they have to guess. It may be an educated guess, but it's still a guess.
      • The way I see it, there are several reasons for the slow adoption rate and all of them are working against Windows.
        1. Older hardware is good enough for consumers
          Most consumers don't upgrade the OS on their existing hardware. Most of them get the next version of Windows when they get new hardware. For the most part, consumers are staying with existing hardware longer.
        2. Businesses don't try bleeding edge software
          Most businesses are now migrating to Win 7 to replace XP. They skipped Vista for many issues. E

    • Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Funny)

      by Trepidity ( 597 ) <delirium-slashdot@@@hackish...org> on Monday July 01, 2013 @05:37AM (#44151979)

      I'm waiting for them to put out a press release when they hit 5x Linux market share.

  • So it should (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ice Tiger ( 10883 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @05:08AM (#44151877)

    It's the best OS MS have produced in my opinion, runs well and like the UI and yes I'm running a desktop computer! I use OSX, iOS, Ubuntu and Windows so maybe am used to switching UIs so learning Metro was no big deal compared to someone who has only seen the Start button all their computer life.

    • Re:So it should (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @05:34AM (#44151963) Journal
      I have to agree: it runs well. Booting is exceptionally fast; in Windows 8 I'll be running on the desktop while my older (but more powerful) machine is still loading the Windows 7 login screen. I dislike Metro though; I suppose I could make it into something usable, if I spend the effort to nicely organize my favorite apps on the Metro canvas, but why should I? The old Windows start menu does that for me in a very usable way with zero effort (other than installing the tool to bring back that start menu). Besides that, I like to use the desktop like my real desktop, to organize and sort files I am working on. The Metro canvas is useless for that.

      A real problem with Metro is that so many basic actions are hidden or counter-intuitive. You're doing something wrong if people have to search for help on how to close an app or manage windows on your OS. And before they can even try and search for that info, they have to use another computer to search for help on getting the damn address bar to appear in IE! People's hatred for Metro doesn't just come from having to learn a new UI, a lot of it is due to (piss-)poor design.

      • Re:So it should (Score:5, Informative)

        by Unkl_Shvelven ( 1002053 ) <{shvelven} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday July 01, 2013 @06:31AM (#44152135)
        The reason why Windows 8 boots so fast is that it doesn't actually boot. When you "Shut Down" from the charms bar, it actually just kills your user session and hibernates. You can turn off fastboot [eightforums.com] and see for yourself.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          it actually just kills your user session and hibernates

          Yep. And if you copy files to a directory that is in memory in the hibernated system (say from a Mac or Linux dual boot partition) Windows 8 will eat your files with corruption! All because Microsoft lied so they could add another "feature".

        • That would not be true. Shut down and restarts aren't the hybrid hibernate that you talk about. That's only if you tell it to sleep, or it goes into hibernation. Or you tell it to shutdown and you have your system set to allow hibernation. Most desktops won't be configured that way. Even if you do have hibernation enabled, and you tell it to restart, then it isn't one of those "hybrid boots".

          And in any case, for most users in the cases it actually does a hybrid boot, they wouldn't care that it's not do

      • It's all well and good having an OS that boots quickly - everyone like that. However, it would be interesting to compare the time saved due to a fast boot, to that wasted by trying to find which "Visual Studio 2..." is the one you actually want.

    • learning Metro was no big deal compared to someone who has only seen the Start button all their computer life.

      Um, the problem isn't learning it, the problem is liking it.

    • I don't want to "Learn" Metro! I just want to use my computer!

      If the interface is not obvious then it is getting in the way, and Metro (or whatever it is called this week) just gets in the way

      The Start button was a faster than the program manager
      the Search in the start menu was often faster than using the Start menu
      Metro is in all cases slower ...

      I don't want to run windows, use windows etc ... I want to use the programs that run on it ....!

  • Huh (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ignacio ( 1465 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @05:18AM (#44151907)

    I guess cramming it down people's throats really *is* an effective way to gain marketshare...

    • Exactly, it's not like they have a choice. I do wonder how these statistics are gathered, and how many of those people use it for a day or so and then install Linux; does it account for that?. It's like TV Ratings, send a few hundred surveys to people and based on those, simply assume that's what everybody is watching.

      What gets me is all the news about the NSA and Microsoft. I simply can't understand why people would use Windows after all that, it's insane and no logical at all.

  • XP - 37% with less than a year of support (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blarkon ( 1712194 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @05:22AM (#44151925)
    The real news here is that an OS that has less than a year of support left is at around 37% market share. XP is falling at about 1% per month - but will still be a substantial part of the market (probably at least 25%) when Microsoft stops releasing software updates.

    • Re:XP - 37% with less than a year of support (Score:5, Funny)

      by dingen ( 958134 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @05:30AM (#44151951)

      A lack of support might push a few businesses to adopt a newer version of Windows, but I doubt people at home will care. Actually, a lack of updates might be seen as a feature (no reboots!) by those who are still holding on to a 12+ year old operating system.

      • actually businesses won't care either in the short term.

        As when th updates start businesses will no longer worry that an update might break their tools, so they can keep on working without fear. Also a lot of businesses are going virtual.

        I took a new job last august, the machine I was initially given was win 2K. Now they updated it almost immediately for me, but other than the crappy keyboard, mouse and monitor,all it ran was remote desktop to the server.

      • Re:XP - 37% with less than a year of support (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Teun ( 17872 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @07:19AM (#44152257)
        12 y/o? Yes the name XP might be but over the years the various service packs changed it dramatically.

        I would count the age of up to date XP installs from the issue date of SP3, early May 2008.

        • Yes the name XP might be but over the years the various service packs changed it dramatically.

          In what ways have the Service Packs changed XP such that average (or even "power") user would notice?

    • People often try to read into this some undying love for XP. The reality is the useful life of hardware has been extended and combined with the recent and current ecomic climate, hardware purchases have been delayed or cancelled. As a case in point, I just upgraded my main development desktop. The old one was built in Dec 2002 and it was only recently that the performance dropped below tolerable. I would have upgraded the windows OS to 7 but it failed the compatability test.

      I think the take away from my

  • Regular users (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Loki_666 ( 824073 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @06:13AM (#44152089)

    I bet even non-techie users don't like Metro.... for a start, where will they store their documents now? The desktop and the recycle bin were the usual two favourite locations pre Win 8. :P

  • I remember when MS launched Win95 people were very attached to how Win3.11 worked, so many were pissed back then, but you didn't have any feasible alternative at the moment. Today things have changed and you've got plenty of alternatives: Win7, WinXP, MacOS, Linux, etc. You've also got smartphones and tablets which for many are more than enough for them.

    OTOH, last month I've got a Lenovo laptop which came with Win7 preinstalled and Win8 disks to install it. If it was the other way around maybe Win8 adoption

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Teun ( 17872 )
      Indeed, especially the non-consumer versions of brands like Lenovo, HP and Toshiba still come with Win7 and Win8 as an option.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      With 95 you were given the choice of using the new explorer interface or the old task man interface that 3.11 used... Many users chose to stick with the old ui.

      • With 95 you were given the choice of using the new explorer interface or the old task man interface that 3.11 used... Many users chose to stick with the old ui.

        Really?? First I ever heard of this...

    • I remember when MS launched Win95 people were very attached to how Win3.11 worked, so many were pissed back then, but you didn't have any feasible alternative at the moment. Today things have changed and you've got plenty of alternatives: Win7, WinXP, MacOS, Linux, etc. You've also got smartphones and tablets which for many are more than enough for them.

      OTOH, last month I've got a Lenovo laptop which came with Win7 preinstalled and Win8 disks to install it. If it was the other way around maybe Win8 adoption rate would be higher.

      Funny, I remember when Win95 launched and most people were very enthused about it as it was a great upgrade.

  • The link that ought to have been in the summary:
    http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=11&qpcustomb=0 [netmarketshare.com]

  • Hooray! (Score:3)

    by jasper160 ( 2642717 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @07:56AM (#44152399)
    Should be titled: Windows 8 sucks less than Vista.

  • Because PC buyers have no choice (Score:3)

    by walterbyrd ( 182728 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @10:30AM (#44153819)

    Most places that sell PCs only sell Win8. If you can get Win7 at all, you have to pay a premium for it.

    Also, people figure "I might as well buy it now, since I am going to be forced to use it anyway."

    People are *not* buying Win8 because they like it. If people had a choice, they would stay with win7, or XP.

  • Market share, but they hid the real story (Score:3)

    by hazydave ( 96747 ) on Monday July 01, 2013 @04:04PM (#44158267)

    Claiming this is market share, that implies this is for new sales only, not installed base. Sounds like they screwed up the terminology... otherwise, that doesn't say much at all good about Windows 8.... and also suggests some crazy people are still buying new Windows Vista systems.

    If this really does mean installed base, then you have to ask how that's actually computed. If it's just based on sales figures, it's likely very skewed in Windows 8's favor. On the day that Windows 8 shipped, all of the enterprise licensees started buying Windows 8 licenses. These are the licenses that let the IT department clone their standard disc for all new PCs and just pay MS for each one. These licenses, of course, include full downgrade rights, and most of them are still being used for Windows 7 or Windows XP... but they come up as Windows 8 for the purpose of sales figures. The last study on this I saw showed that less than 60% of the actual sold Windows 8 licenses were actually being used for Windows 8. Some detail on which set of assumptions (lies, etc) this is used for would be interesting.

    And the real news... earlier this year, late last year, etc. many different similar installed base reports put MacOS growing from 4.8% last year to just over 5% earlier this year -- this is internationally, Apple of course does much better domestically. It's probably just a difference in their calculations versus the various other industry numbers people.. but if MacOS really did jump 2% in one quarter, in installed base rather than just quarterly sales, that would be big news. Of course, that growth might come as much from a failing PC market as some rally of Apple products.

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