14 DAY TRIAL // Statistics provided by NetMarketShare for the month of September indicate that Windows 7 continues to be the number one desktop operating system worldwide, and what’s worse, to remain a top choice despite its approaching end of support.
Windows 10, which is Microsoft’s main focus right now, is growing and getting closer to Windows 7, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that the two can switch places anytime soon.
In fact, Windows 10’s slow growth and Windows 7’s slight decline happening every month is living proof that it’ll take longer until Microsoft’s new desktop OS becomes the leader, hopefully sooner than January 2020 when Windows 7 becomes unsupported.
If Windows 7 doesn’t decline fast enough, there’s a chance that Microsoft has to deal with another Windows XP moment when users refuse to upgrade despite an operating system losing support and systems remaining vulnerable to attacks.
Specifically, Windows 7 maintained its leading position with 46.22 percent market share in September, followed by Windows 10 with 28.65 percent. Windows 7 declined 2.21 percent last month, while Windows 10 improved 0.66 percent.
Windows XP also going down
While at first glance this looks like a trend that Microsoft should be very pleased with, Windows 7’s performance in the last 12 months has been full of ups and downs, pointing to what’s likely to be a substantial number of users trying out Windows 10 and then downgrading because of various reasons.
In November 2016, for instance, Windows 7 was running on 47.17 percent, before growing to a record 49.46 percent in May 2017. It’s been dropping ever since, with the decrease recorded the last month the biggest since January.
On the good side, Windows XP is also losing market share, but once again, the whole thing is happening slower than anyone, including Microsoft, expected. XP is currently powering 5.51 percent of the desktop systems out there, down from 6.07 percent the month before. The chances are that it won’t be growing back anytime soon, and this can only be good news given that it no longer receives support since April 2014.
Microsoft is preparing to release another major Windows 10 update called Fall Creators Update, and this should help boost the market share of its latest operating system, especially because it’s expected to generate a new round of updates among systems still running older versions of Windows.
