Windows 8 April, 2014 Market share

Windows 8.x is still growing as it is now up to 11.37% of market share. That totals too 7.24% for Windows 8.0 and 4.13% for Windows 8.1. Windows 7 is up as well to now 50.4%. Windows XP though only dropped from last months 17.15% to 17.14%.

StatCounter Global Stats - Browser, OS, Search Engine including Mobile Market Share

I don't know if this is news, as it seems more opinion, but on a positive note.

Don't Believe The Windows 8 'Failure' Hype - Forbes

Edit; some links.

http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/201...ndows-8-8-1-market-share-windows-xp-still-27/

http://www.cbronline.com/news/tech/...8-adoption-suffers-another-slow-month-4206653

 

Odd W8 goes up and W7 goes up....now it doesn't take math skills but looks like W7 by itself beats W8 or W8.1 and to have to add those together just to get meaningful results is a sign W8 isn't going to take over W7 or remove it from the top bracket. XP dropped by .01% maybe a whole digit drop would make more news but .01%...what gives....
What is even sadder...look at Mac...it's second in line to W7.....now if W8 can't even beat Mac....one might as well forget W8 taking any big bite from Apple.. *pun* this is the Desktop O/S in the US market.....using their stat counters

 

Woohoo, here's the good news guys: Go to the first link in TANWare's post, and set the region to Antarctica; now that one's awesome! I think Microsoft needs to open a store in Antarctica.

 

StatCounter link isn't working for me, but StormJumper's assertion that OSX has a bigger market share than Windows 8.x runs contrary to what I've seen in previous months. Can someone who can access StatCounter tell me what percentage they have OSX at right now?

The Forbes editorial is very interesting. By looking at licenses per hundred PCs sold, you can control for the fact that the PC market is much slower than it was when previous versions of Windows debuted (thanks to the rise of Android and iOS and the negative effect they have had on PC sales as a whole).

Don't Believe The Windows 8 'Failure' Hype - Forbes

 

Really did you take a good look at what they showed you - making it sound like it was my data take another real good look it was from StatCounter themselves and based on the Country selection they had for the data they provided. It looks like people forget to see what was mentioned "US" if one didn't read my reply correctly and made Assertion themselves without reading what I wrote rather would read what they want to read from it. The page is messed hm....that makes one wonder...whom is trying to redo the stats to fit their narrative>?????

Yeah like you think Forbes has more money then Billy Boy?? Oh FYI form the looks of all the Android and iOS they aren't selling anymore then they have when the first started...this is called leveling when the hottest new things excites people eventually it become a everything and the luster has all but ran out and this is just about getting the newest toys but with the same software underneath nothing really spectacular or earth shaking as they were they first came out.

 

Conspiracy theorist much? The Stat-counter website wouldn't load on my work machine, so I was asking what the percentage usage of OSX was.

I've now gotten those numbers from ArsTechnica. And I have to disagree with your statement:

OSX (all versions, hardware running it was first released in 2001): 7.58%
Windows 8.x (all versions, hardware running it was first released October 2012): 11.3%

 

I don't understand your point here. Could you clarify it for me please?

A person who has a tablet because they didn't want to buy a new PC, and finds the tablet suits their needs and does the things they want, doesn't need to buy a new PC. Therefore they.. don't.

I don't know if the market is saturated (I know a few people who are still on old school flip phones) but the vast majority of people who intend to buy mobile devices, have. Now it's about selling the latest and greatest one to these same people, which they do, successfully. Apple doesn't really complain much about their iPhone 5x sales numbers.

I own a pile of high performance laptops and a gaming desktop and still, my iPad gets a good lion's share of my time, because none of these work quite so well on the couch.

 

Another link using a different metric.

Windows XP share drops while Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 see a combined share of 11.3% | WinBeta

 

Man oh man, another month, another Windows market share thread. Can we start posting these on Fridays? I believe today's children use the current vernacular to describe this as

Dis gun be goooooddddddd

 

It is interesting especially now, Vista has had the you know what beat out of it. XP is about to be kicked out of the rink. 7 is still in fighting trim and clobering all comers to date. Lastly 8.x.x is still trying to find its way into consumers hearts after a few rounds, with the next one about to begin.

 

Somewhere there's a political forum where a poster, every time it happens, posts the results of the "Republicans tried to vote down Obamacare again" vote. Note: this has been over 7000 times (not OVER 9000 yet).

So really on the broken-record-o-meter this is kinda meh.

 

I tend to follow NetMarketShare more closely than StatCounter, since the latter doesn't take into account the geographic bias of their data (which is fine if you're looking at their one-country stats... less desirable when looking at the worldwide share). For those, XP lost between 1-2% this month, while 8/8.1 had a modest gain, and 7 has a gain of over 1%. Which actually makes sense. Most of the computers being switched off XP/replaced before the end of support are going to be business machines, and most of those businesses are going to use Windows 7 instead of 8 since it's more similar to XP, less of a jump and thus less likely to cause compatibility issues, and has been out longer so they've had more time to test/certify their programs on 7. I doubt the trend will continue of Windows 7 outgaining 8 two to one after the number of businesses moving from XP to 7 slows down, which probably will be within a couple months. But it still shows that Windows 7 has staying power against 8, just as XP did against Vista, and 8/8.1 probably never will overtake 7 (unless Microsoft keeps the customer-facing version at 8.x forever, which seems unlikely).

The Forbes article is too unscientific to be of any value, and near the end of it the author alludes to some of its problems. One of them is assuming that the quality of a Windows release does not influence how many PCs are sold, which is false. I knew people who intentionally bought PCs in late 2006 because they'd heard negative things about Vista, showing Vista decreasing sales. And Vista also caused people to keep their old machines till 7 came out. I'm sure both Vista and 8 have also decreased sales due to people electing to repair their old machines when something went wrong rather than buy a new PC with Vista/8. Whereas, on the flip side, Windows 95 was so revolutionary that it undoubtedly increased sales. Another problem with the article was not considering that other factors may have influenced the already rather dubious copies of Windows sold to PCs sold metric. In the developed world, most PCs are going to sell with a copy of Windows 8 regardless (whether downgraded to 7 or not), and that's been the case for quite awhile, with different Windows versions. But elsewhere, PCs may or may not sell with legit copies of Windows. And I suspect one of the main reasons that 7/8 have a higher ratio of copies sold to PCs shipped is that they're more difficult to pirate. Vista is more difficult to pirate than XP as well, but had a disadvantage in that it was so resource-heavy that Microsoft continued to sell plain XP Home (not downgraded Vista Business) for several years, whereas now most Windows 7 copies sold are technically downgrades of 8 Pro. And the author also mentions another flaw in that the definition of "PC" has varied... so it's really comparing apples to acorns, and not a good comparison between Windows versions.

I'm glad to see Vista below 3%. It does seem odd, though, that Microsoft is dropping XP support with 27% marketshare, but continuing to support Vista at 3% marketshare for another 3 years. I mean, who wants to run Vista for another three days, let alone years, anyway? Seems like everyone would be happier and the transition would be simpler if Microsoft instead dropped Vista support, gave Vista owners an option to upgrade to 7 for free, and supported XP for 2 more years. Less support time for older OSes for Microsoft, fewer people left vulnerable and thus less damage done to Windows' reputation, great thankfulness from the poor 3% of people still stuck on Vista who can now move to 7, less stuff broken in upgrade since 7 is essentially Vista++, and the excuse that people's current hardware isn't powerful enough to upgrade doesn't work anymore since 7 is actually less demanding than Vista. It'd be win-win-win.

 

well it seems XP, at least to some, is not dead in the water.

Edit; I was originally linking a Softpedia article but upon looking at the linked thread of the conversation used as the articles reference that is going on at M$ help section it is just another flame fest. I have removed all links as this IMHO does not qualify as news.

 

My home laptop is running Vista, its not horrible. I had an XP laptop that died about 6 months before 7 came out. I knew 7 was coming and wanted to wait for it but I needed a laptop for work so I broke down and got the Vista laptop. Luckily by then, most of the issues with it had been ironed out. Its never given me a problem so I never put 7 on it. I would like a new laptop now but this time I can wait for 9.

At work we have several older CNC machines that run XP. You cannot change the OS on them as the machine will not initialize otherwise. We even have one running 98 and one running 95. We did get rid of the OS/2 one tho as the machine got replaced. Not that OS/2 ever gave me a problem.

 

On the CNC machines, they may require different software but the PC hardware may not be replaceable. What happens there is most older CNC's require a true legacy LPT port and most modern machines do not have this. I have a new slot car lap tracker/timer that needs an older legacy printer port and had to get a refurb that was originally an XP machine.

 

Yeah, I keep a room full of older hardware for our CNC machines for when something breaks. Some of this stuff is probably close to 20 years old.