Windows 7 Market Share Drops Below 50 Percent in North America

[Exterminator]

Content source

http://www.softpedia.com/blog/Windows-7-Market-Share-Drops-Below-50-Percent-in-North-America-484445.shtml

Preliminary stats for June show a drop in Windows 7 usage
Windows 7 is currently the world’s most popular desktop operating system, and statistics previously showed that more than 1 in 2 PCs were running it worldwide.

But preliminary figures for June provided to us by StatCounter show that, for the first time, Windows 7 dropped below 50 percent market share in North America, while Windows 8.1 adoption was on the rise.

In the first two weeks of June, Windows 7 declined to 46.83 percent, according to these early statistics, while Apple’s Mac OS X climbed on the second position with a share of 18.58 percent.

Windows 8.1 came second with 18.16 percent, followed by Windows XP, which obviously lost ground because it no longer receives updates and security patches since April 2014, to eventually reach 6.05 percent.

If you’re asking where Windows 8 is, it’s worth knowing that Microsoft’s core modern operating system dropped even more to a negative record of 2.84 percent, behind Windows Vista, which is still running on 2.95 percent of the desktop computers in North America.

Obviously, these figures can change by the end of the month, but the shift off Windows 7 could be a sign that Windows 10 has a chance to dethrone it and climb on the leading position in the desktop OS market, but it’s all a long-term shot, so it remains to be seen how things would evolve in the next few years.

 

[Rolo]

The author of that article doesn't cite a data source.

 

[jamescv7]

Windows 7 still dominant even Windows 10 will enforce in July 30 onwards and Windows 8's 18%+ may decline too due to expressing new OS appearance. That's always the flow of market shares where Linux and Mac OS will remain in those position on very long time unless Microsoft makes subscription based.

 

[aztony]

Obviously, these figures can change by the end of the month, but the shift off Windows 7 could be a sign that Windows 10 has a chance to dethrone it and climb on the leading position in the desktop OS market

I, for one, will be staying put w/Win 7 until its support end. There maybe a lot of enthusiasm for Win 10 leading up to its official release. But already there is growing uncertainty and wariness on the part in Windows users, particularly as it pertains to the foretold Microsoft shift to a subscription based model. The ramifications of that is still very much an unknown. Question is, will current enthusiasm be sustained when the unknowns are made clear in the wake of the product's release?

 

[Rolo]

Said "uncertainty and wariness" doesn't have anything to do with Win10 as an OS. It's free for most Win users and that's that. M$ is better served with one platform--especially one that has it's Store and Xbox integrated with it. To do otherwise would be penny-wise but dollar-dumb.

I like Win10 better than Win7. I loathed Win8/8.1 and couldn't suffer with it more than a week (came installed on a gaming laptop, which quickly got 7 installed).


Besides...these are the stats that really matter (Steam Hardware & Software Survey: May 2015):

Windows
95.79%
-0.02%

Windows 7 64 bit
46.76%
-0.18%

Windows 8.1 64 bit
30.15%
+0.68%

Windows 7
9.97%
-0.36%

Windows 8 64 bit
3.23%
-0.12%

Windows XP 32 bit
3.18%
-0.11%

Windows 10 64 bit
0.84%
+0.11%

Windows 8.1
0.63%
-0.01%

Windows Vista 32 bit
0.46%
-0.01%

Windows 8
0.26%
-0.01%

Windows Vista 64 bit
0.22%
-0.01%

OSX
3.23%
+0.07%

MacOS 10.10.3 64 bit
1.45%
+0.97%

MacOS 10.9.5 64 bit
0.55%
-0.02%

MacOS 10.10.2 64 bit
0.51%
-0.89%

MacOS 10.10.1 64 bit
0.15%
-0.04%

MacOS 10.7.5 64 bit
0.11%
+0.01%

MacOS 10.8.5 64 bit
0.10%
-0.01%

MacOS 10.10.0 64 bit
0.10%
-0.01%

MacOS 10.6.8 64 bit
0.08%
0.00%

MacOS 10.10.4 64 bit
0.08%
+0.08%

Linux
0.88%
-0.06%

Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS 64 bit
0.26%
-0.02%

Ubuntu 15.04 64 bit
0.14%
+0.14%

Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca 64 bit
0.09%
0.00%

Linux 64 bit
0.05%
+0.05%