April was the sixth full month of availability for Microsoft’s latest operating system version: Windows 8.1 continues to steadily grow while Windows 8 remains largely flat, allowing the duo together to crack 12 percent market share. Meanwhile, despite support for Windows XP finally ending last month, the ancient OS still has more than 26 percent of the pie.
The latest market share data from Net Applications shows that Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 have gained a combined 0.94 percentage points (from 11.30 percent to 12.24 percent). More specifically, Windows 8 slipped 0.05 percentage points (from 6.41 percent to 6.36 percent), while Windows 8.1 grabbed an additional 0.99 percentage points (from 4.89 percent to 5.88 percent).
Meanwhile, Windows 7 managed to grab an additional 0.50 percentage points (from 48.77 percent to 49.27 percent). Regardless of how Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 are doing, it seems like their predecessor is eager to keep gaining users.
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Windows 8, which saw its biggest gain in August at 2.01 percentage points and its biggest loss in November at 0.87 percentage points, is once again back to losing share after a small blip in March. There are still computers being sold with Windows 8, but at the same time Microsoft is encouraging the upgrade path to Windows 8.1 by making it just a free download away for Windows 8 users.
Going back to earlier versions, Windows Vista fell 0.10 percentage points (from 2.99 percent to 2.89 percent). Windows XP meanwhile managed to drop a solid 1.40 percentage points (from 27.69 percent to 26.29 percent). Unfortunately for Microsoft, that drop is nowhere near as large as it should be.
In 2013, Windows lost share every month except for March, July, and November. So far in 2014, Windows slipped a bit in January, gained in February and March, and then dipped 0.14 percentage points (from 90.94 percent to 90.80 percent) in April. OS X gained 0.05 percentage points (to 7.62 percent), while Linux gained 0.09 percentage points (to 1.58 percent).
Net Applications uses data captured from 160 million unique visitors each month by monitoring some 40,000 websites for its clients. StatCounter is another popular service for watching market share moves; the company looks at 15 billion page views. To us, it makes more sense to keep track of users than of page views, but if you prefer the latter, the corresponding data is available here (Windows 8 is at 7.21 percent).
See also – IE11 market share passes IE10 and IE9 combined, Chrome cements its lead over Firefox
Top Image Credit: Mario Tama / Getty Images
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