Windows 7 is now powering more than half of the world’s PCs

May 19, 2015 08:45 GMT  ·  By

All eyes are on Windows 10 these days, but it’s another Windows version that’s ruling the desktop world right now. With Windows 10, Microsoft is tackling the PC, tablet, and smartphone sectors, but as far as the desktop is concerned, Windows 7 is the one and only absolute leader.

Windows 7 currently has a market share of approximately 53 percent, which means that 1 in 2 PCs on the planet is powered by this particular OS version.

And the graph you see here, generated with StatCounter data, shows how Windows 7 became such a popular choice for PC users in six years, while Windows 8, the OS version introduced in 2012, still struggles to get some 12 percent of the market.

Doubling the market share in just 12 months

The chart in this article uses figures collected since 2010, so Windows 7 already was on the market for approximately one year. In 2010, however, Windows 7 had a share of 17.95 percent, but its ascension in the next few years was absolutely remarkable.

In just 12 months, for example, Windows 7 jumped to 35.15 percent, which means that it nearly doubled its market share in just a single year. In 2012, it was already installed on 50.4 percent of the computers across the world, thus becoming the number one operating system on the desktop.

The blue line in the graph is Windows XP, and as you can see, its decline started in 2010, when it was still installed on 56.11 percent of computers, and continued in the next few years until eventually slowing down at about 13 percent this year.

Windows 7 was, is, and will remain the number one desktop OS for a long time, and Windows 10 is unlikely to make any difference in the short term, despite Microsoft’s aggressive campaign. Users simply love Windows 7 too much to let it go that fast.