Windows 8 is definitely impacting Windows 7 adoption, in all the right ways it seems. Mid-September 2011 brought with it BUILD, and with it the unveiling of Windows 8 to the world.
Microsoft also released Windows Developer Preview, a pre-Beta Build of Windows 8 belonging to the Milestone 3 (M3) stage of the development process. Build 8102 ended up being downloaded over 500,000 times in the first 24 hours after availability.
And of course, BUILD provided as promised, deep insight into the next iteration of Windows, with the software giant noting that Windows 8 is just a codename, but holding off on announcing the branding strategy and the commercial moniker for the OS.
I’m sure that the company worried about the reverberations of Windows 8 announcements at BUILD over Windows 7 uptake. But so far so good.
According to statistics shared by Internet metrics company
Net Applications, the growth of Windows 7 actually accelerated. Usage jumped almost 2% compared to the previous month, namely from 30.60% in August 2011 to 32.42% in September.
This increase is correlated with a steep decline in Windows XP’s usage share, which dropped from 52.46% to 50.50%, also around 2%, in the same period of time.
It appears that more and more users around the world are upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7, and that Windows 8 might very well be smoothing over this transition.
Of course, it’s too early to tell whether this increase in Windows 7 usage will settle into a trend, but my best guess is that adoption will accelerate even further over the next three months.
Meanwhile, users continue to also upgrade from Windows Vista, although at a smaller rate, with its usage share decreasing from 9.40% to 9.09% over the past two months.
Net Applications has Windows’ usage share at 92.44% at the end of September 2011, with just 6.45% for Mac, and 1.11% for Linux. The usage share of both Mac and Linux increased, while Windows’ dipped slightly from 92.90% to 92.44% from August until September.
XP’s usage share will drop under 50% worldwide sometime this month, while Windows 7 will be catapulted closer to its main rival, a platform which it will dethrone as the top OS worldwide in the coming months.
Windows 8 Developer Preview Build 8102 Milestone 3 (M3) is available for download here.
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