Barely five months after its release, Windows 8 has captured 3.17% of the desktop operating systems market share, though it’s still lagging behind Vista, according to the March stats from Net Applications.
Windows 8 shipped in October 2012, and its market share has grown slowly but steadily. In November, Net Analytics tracked a 1.09% share for Windows 8, which went up to 1.72% in December. It hit 2.26% in January, then 2.67% in February, and took another jump to reach 3.17% in March.
Windows captures more than 91% of the desktop OS market (Macs collectively have 6.94% and Linux systems, 1.17%), but Windows 7 is used on 44.73% of systems and XP has 38.73% of the market. At 3.17% of the market, Windows 8 is the fourth most popular OS, still behind Vista (which retains 4.99%) but ahead of Mac OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion (2.65%).
The Net Applications stats are obtained by tracking 40,000 websites and data captured from 160 million unique visitors across the Web.
Another company that tracks market share is StatCounter, which calculates its figures based on 15 billion page views from websites it tracks.
StatCounter’s figures are not very different from those of Net Applications, showing Windows 8 at 3.9% for March, a slight increase from 3.16 percent in February.
Net Applications’ stats go back only to 2011, so one can’t compare how Windows 7 did in its first five months; but StatCounter has more historical data. Since StateCounter’s current figures closely match those of Net Applications, a comparison gives some illustrative context.
StatCounter’s figures shows that five months after its launch in October 2009, Windows 7 had 11.92% of the market, while Vista had 20.73% and the leader was XP with more than 51% of the market. Based on these statistics, it appears that in its first five months, Windows 7’s adoption rate was three times higher than Windows 8’s.
It’s not surprising that Windows 8 lags Windows 7’s initial adoption rate, as the new OS has polarised users with its new interface. Ed Bott of ZDNet.com uncovered a similar result when he compared more than 3,000 Amazon ratings for boxed Windows versions. His research found that Windows 7 had overall 47% five-star ratings, compared to 36% for Windows 8, and 23% for Vista. Windows 8 also has 29% one-star ratings, faring better than Vista’s 42%, but still above 17% of the Windows 7 one-star ratings.
With Windows 8 though, Microsoft can address issues with the OS much quicker than previously, since the company announced it will update more frequently. The first such update in line is Windows Blue, which is due out later this year.
IDG News Service
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