Microsoft surely would have hoped to see a bigger number, at least a 10 percent stake. But all will be forgotten if Windows 8.1 starts raking up market share at an accelerated pace.
Windows 8 growth has been slow up until now, but the modern platform is surely growing, unlike Windows Vista and its terribly slow crawl. One the day of the launch of Windows 8.1, the core version of Microsoft’s modern operating platform sits comfortably at third place.
The latest statistics provided by market research firm StatCounter for the first 15 days of October indicate that Windows 8 has a worldwide market share of 7.65 percent.
Windows 7 is the undisputed leader, and occupies the top position on the chart with 51.61 percent. The evergreen Windows XP comes in second place with 20.36 percent, and the usual suspects like Mac OS X, Windows Vista, iOS and Android round up the regular positions.
The big story for the day obviously is Windows 8.1 — the first ever refresh of Redmond’s modern platform, and one the company would be hoping becomes a harbinger of change.
And this shiny new operating system has every chance to impress, and comes with a long list of improvements including the returning Start button, plenty of Start Screen enhancements, and not to mention the sleek and fast Internet Explorer 11.
All eyes are now on what kind of a performance Windows 8.1 manages to pull off in the coming weeks and months. We should have a bit of an idea by the end of the year, surely we should.
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Odd I know I’ve seen a couple reports from other sites that says Windows 8 is at least well over 8%. Do the Win 8 numbers include all the people running the Preview of 8.1 and the leaked builds or is it strictly Windows 8?
Seems strictly Windows 8. Be interesting where and how these market research firms classify Windows 8 form now on.
The over 8% figure probably is from Net Applications, I would imagine.