Stats show Windows 10 is losing market share

Apr 3, 2018 05:00 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft says Windows 10 is growing, and recent statistics shared by the company revealed that the operating system was installed on 600 million devices in February. Moreover, outgoing Windows chief Terry Myerson said Windows 10 had 700 million active users every month.

But data offered by NetMarketShare for the month of March shows that Windows 10 is, in fact, losing ground, with Windows 7 once again taking the lead in terms of growth.

This can only be bad news for Microsoft given its aggressive Windows 10 push and the approaching end of support for Windows 7 in January 2020, but these numbers indicate that not all users are willing to move to the most recent OS just yet.

Specifically, Windows 7 managed to improve its share from 41.69% in February to 43.44% in April, which is more or less surprising given that Microsoft is now gearing up to introduce a new Windows 10 version called Spring Creators Update.

Windows 10 down, Windows 7 up

At the same time, Windows 10 dropped from 34.62% to 33.83%, which is again rather unexpected in anticipation of the new OS update debut.

Overall, Windows 10 declined 0.79% during the month of March, while Windows 7 increased 1.75%, thus increasing its lead in the desktop operating system world.

All the other Windows versions are far behind and they don’t even count in the battle for the leading place. Windows 8.1, for instance, is third with 5.46% in March, while macOS 10.13 is the top non-Windows platform in the charts with 4.60% share.

Without a doubt, Windows 10 is likely to improve its share in the coming months, especially thanks to the release of the Spring Creators Update, but the biggest question is actually how much it’s going to improve.

Most of the users installing the new OS release are already on Windows 10, and if Microsoft doesn’t convince more Windows 7 users to upgrade in the coming months, it’s very likely to go through another Windows XP moment when support comes to an end in January 2020.

March 2018 OS market share

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Windows 10 will get a new major update this month
March 2018 OS market share
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