14 DAY TRIAL // While globally Windows 7 is still runner up to Windows XP, the latest iteration of the Windows client has already managed to surpass its predecessor in one market in Europe.
According to statistics shared by Internet metrics company StatCounter, Windows 7 has become the most used operating system in Germany as of January 2011.
Even with Windows Vista having already been bested by Windows 7 on multiple fronts, including market share, Windows XP continues to be the dominant OS worldwide, but it appears that Germany is an ex exception to this rule.
“If we use StatCounter as a measurement method, one gets an impression, that the market shares of the operating systems have shifted dramatically in Germany in recent months.
“The market share of Windows XP fell by> 70% in 2008 to become <35%. Trend expected to continue. Windows 7 had only one week to Mac OS X pass them on.
“Windows Vista was out of date after nine months in July 2010 and Windows XP was finally back after Christmas 2010 Windows 7. Meanwhile, Windows 7 is the most widely used operating system in Germany,” reads the rough, machine translation version of a post by Microsoft’s Daniel Melanchthon.
Windows 7 becoming top dog on the German platform market is nothing but a preview of things to come.
Over 300 million licenses of Vista’s successor have been sold since the launch in October 2009, and demand for the operating system is still strong both on the consumer and the enterprise segments.
Net Applications revealed earlier this month that Windows 7’s global usage share increased to 22.31% as of January, almost double that of Vista.
Meanwhile, XP’s usage share took yet another steep dive and dropped to 55.26%. Vista too continues to lose its users to Windows 7, and is now down to just 11.66%.
