Windows 7 Tops Vista, But Windows XP Still Dominates

Windows 7 is growing with volume licensing and retail sales, and its 14.46 percent global market share now exceeds Windows Vista at 14.32 percent. But according to Net Applications, Windows XP remains dominant with a 61.8 percent global market share. Microsoft expects Windows 7 sales to keep growing as users update old PCs.
The percentage of Windows 7 users worldwide exceeded the share held by Windows Vista for the first time last month, according to Net Applications. Despite Microsoft's withdrawal of active support, however, the web metrics firm's latest data Relevant Products/Services demonstrates that Windows XP continues to be the OS of choice for the majority of PC users worldwide.

Windows 7 beat out Vista in July with a 14.46 percent market share, followed by Vista at 14.32 percent. Released at the end of January 2007, Vista reached its market share peak of 18.83 percent in October 2009 when Windows 7 was commercially introduced. "With 175 million licenses sold to date, [Windows 7] is the fastest-selling operating system ever," said Microsoft CFO Peter Klein last month.

Incredibly High Satisfaction

Enterprise adoption of Windows 7 is accelerating, driven by an increase in volume licensing to businesses plus retail sales, noted Microsoft Director of Investor Relations Bill Koefoed. "Importantly, customer Relevant Products/Services satisfaction for Windows 7 is incredibly high at 94 percent and businesses are deploying Window 7 in the enterprise Relevant Products/Services," Koefoed said.

However, Windows XP remains the world's leading operating system by far. Released in August 2001 and with more than 400 million copies in use by January 2006, Windows XP held a global market share of more than 61.8 percent in July -- double the share of Vista and Windows 7 combined, according to Net Applications.

Overall, Microsoft attained a 91.3 percent share of the global OS market in July, followed by the Mac OS at 5.06 percent, and Linux at slightly less than one percent. The market shares for the Mac and Linux have remained relatively flat this year.

Microsoft executives expect sales at the company's Windows division to grow roughly in line with PC shipments during the current quarter and over the next 12 months. Given that PC growth is expected to remain in double digits for some time as users continue to update old PCs, the adoption of Windows 7 will undoubtedly continue to grow at a healthy clip. "Obviously, we are super happy with both the state of the PC market and the customer traction for Windows 7," Klein said.

IE Browser Growth

The other good news for Microsoft is that the software giant's web browser gained ground against the field for the second month running on a global basis, and for the third straight month in the United States. Reversing a long-term negative trend, Internet Explorer extended its usage share gains by 0.42 percent in July, according to Net Applications.

The latest release of Internet Explorer is also gaining traction. According to the web metrics firm, IE8 extended its lead as the world's leading browser by gaining nearly one percentage point of global market share since May. "IE8 is now the fastest-growing and most popular web browser in the market, with IE9 coming soon," Koefoed told analysts last month.

Overall, the gains achieved by Internet Explorer, which held a combined 60.74 percent share at the end of July, have come largely at the expense of Firefox and Chrome, according to the latest data. Firefox fell 0.9 percent from the prior month to a 22.91 percent share -- down from 24.43 percent in January.

Chrome's market share, which had made steady gains throughout this year, declined just 0.08 percent from the prior month to 7.16 percent. By contrast, Google's browser held just a 5.22 percent market share in January.