Windows 7 continues to reign as the leading operating system in the world, but the popular OS has registered some rather interesting numbers even as Redmond gears up to officially launch Windows 8.1 later this month.
The latest numbers to come from market research firm Net Applications reveal that Windows 7 is now powering some 46.43 percent of computers across the globe — still ahead by a country mile when compared to Windows XP and Windows 8.
But quite interestingly, Windows 7 has actually improved its user base in the past month.
This is most likely due to the fact that users and businesses have started to upgrade from the good old Windows XP, and Windows 7 seems to be their platform of choice.
The OS had registered a market share of 45.63 percent back in August — and these September numbers show an increase of 0.8 percentage points.
Windows XP, back then, was running on 33.66 percent of the PCs the world over, and its market share has now fallen to the lows of 31.41 percent. Surely, many of these XP users moved to Windows 7, which explains this sudden and notable increase in a span of 30 days.
Microsoft would be hoping that Windows 8.1 (and by the same token Windows 8) manages to steal most of the Windows XP user base once the new operating system launches later this month.
All Comments
Of course Windows 7 gained share. Before Windows 8 even came out, a lot of people were already planning a transition from XP to 7. They’re not going to just scrap everything and jump to 8. You won’t see 8 share change much until after 8.1 comes out and people start making holiday and year end purchases. 7 is going to increase more for a while because a lot of the transitions from XP to 7 are going to be in large bunches.
and I believe Win7 is a recommended update from XP on the same hardware. Win8 is not recommended on dated XP hardware.