Windows 8 eats more of Vista market share

Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system has been doing relatively well over the course of its short nine month lifespan. It’s matched the same kind of growth that Windows 7 saw in the same launch time period, and it has seen some popularity with tablet owners. NetMarketShare recently took stock of the market share of operating systems on desktop and laptop computers and Windows 7 has not only trounced Vista, it’s also fast approaching the total share of Apple’s Mac OS X.

NetMarketShare’s tallying of operating systems on the internet has been useful to predict trends and it was the basis upon which Microsoft announced that Windows 7 would overtake XP. At the end of June 2013 Windows 7 had the largest market share out of all the other operating systems at 44.37%, trailed by Windows XP at 37.17%.

Desktop Operating System Market Share 2013

The entire Windows ecosystem commands an impressive 91.26% desktop market share, something that Apple and Linux can only dream of achieving. Compared to results from last year, Windows 7 lost 0.33% of market share, Windows XP lost 6.44%, and from December 2012 to June 2013 Windows 8 gained 3.38%. The rest of the lost desktop numbers have been distributed among various Linux distributions and Mac OS X 10.8.

It seems that even Microsoft will have a difficult time usurping Windows XP and Windows 7 from their positions in the market. Windows XP’s official extended support ends in April 2014 and with that it becomes abandonware, open to viruses and hackers who can exploit any known loopholes in the system. If you’re still on Windows XP today its recommend that you at least upgrade to Windows 7 which has support up until 2020.