Just three months ago, we reported how Windows 7 had finally overtaken Windows XP in terms of market share. Now it’s time to see how long it takes Windows 8 to succeed its predecessors.
See also – IE10 grabs 0.51% market share, Firefox passes 20% again, Chrome loses users third month in a row
The latest market share data from Net Applications shows that November 2012 was a great start towards that end. Windows 8 gained a solid 0.68 percentage points (from 0.41 percent to 1.09 percent) while Windows 7 gained just 0.02 percentage points (from 44.69 percent to 44.71 percent). Windows Vista meanwhile slipped 0.10 percentage points (from 5.80 percent to 5.70 percent) and Windows XP fell a huge 0.84 percentage points (from 40.66 percent to 39.82 percent).
In the same time period, As Windows XP’s market share dipped last month, so did the overall Windows slice of the pie: between October and November, it fell 0.22 percentage points (from 91.67 percent to 91.45 percent). At the same time, OS X gained 0.14 percentage points (from 7.16 percent to 7.30 percent) and Linux gained 0.08 percentage points (from 1.17 percent to 1.25 percent).
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While the 1 percent share for Windows 8 is completely expected, it’s interesting to note that less than half of users have chosen to stick with the default IE10 browser: just 0.51 percent. Everyone else appears to be using Chrome, Firefox, or yet another browser.
Yet there is good news for Microsoft: the continued erosion of XP’s share. The company is doing everything it can to get its users off Windows XP. On April 14, 2009, it retired Mainstream Support for the old OS, and with it, support for IE6. Extended Support will be retired on April 8, 2014 (that’s less than 500 days from now).
Microsoft this week announced that Windows 8 sales had surpassed the 40 million mark after one month, which we pointed out looked better than early Windows 7 sales numbers. Unfortunately though, those Windows 8 figures don’t appear to be translating into Internet usage share, whether you ask StatCounter or Net Applications.
Net Applications uses data captured from 160 million unique visitors each month. The service monitors some 40,000 Web sites for its clients.
Image credit: Robert Linder
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