Inevitably, with the advent of a new Windows platform, the old operating system market share race received new fuel, sparking fresh OS usage rate measuring contests. Windows 7 is, of course, the start of this year’s end, having been released to the public for purchase over a month ago. Since General Availability on October 22nd, Windows 7 has had a fulminant rise, being credited with over 4% market share, despite the fact that over a month ago it was well under 1%.

According to statistics made available by Net Application, Windows 7 swallowed large chunks of users, converting them away from older releases of Windows. Windows XP and Windows Vista are, of course, the main operating systems from which Windows 7 is stealing audience, but obviously, both clients are also dominating the OS market.

At the same time, Windows 7 even made Mac OS X trip, and as a consequence, Apple actually lost market share. In all fairness, Mac OS X is only down 0.16% to 5.11% at the end of November 2009, compared to October when it accounted for 5.27% of the market. Moreover, with the launch of Windows 7, Microsoft no longer lost market share on the OS market, stagnating at 92.52% over the past two months.

“Windows 7 Breaks 5% in Daily Tracking - Mac Share Drops .16% in November - Windows 7 has rapidly gained global usage share, topping 5% in daily tracking and 4% for the full month of November. The breakdown of which operating systems Windows 7 is taking share from in November is as follows: Operating System Global Share Net Change (November 1 - 30) Windows XP -1.45%; Windows Vista -0.23%; All Mac Versions -0.16%,” Net Applications revealed.