Windows 7 fails to staunch bleeding as Windows market share slide resumes
http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic..._slide_resumes
Microsoft?s Windows 7 fails to staunch bleeding as Windows market share slide resumes
Microsoft's Windows resumed its usual losing form last month as the operating system's usage share dropped by about a third of a point even as the new Windows 7 posted a second straight month of impressive gains, Web metrics firm Net Applications said Friday.
Although rival desktop operating systems -- Mac and Linux -- essentially remained flat, mobile OSes, including Google's Android and Apple's iPhone OS, took up the slack created by Windows' dip. Mobile operating systems, said Net Applications, now power 1.3% of all the hardware that surfs the Internet.
Windows finished the year with a 92.2% share, down 0.3 of a percentage point. It was the eighth month in 2009 during which Windows lost share.
As it did in 2008, Windows' decline again accelerated in the second half of the year, when it lost 1.2 points of share. That compared to a drop of just 0.5 of a percentage point in the first six months of 2009. In 2008, Windows also lost more than twice as much share between July and December as it did in the preceding six months.
But the slip doesn't mean Windows is in any danger of losing its grip on the operating system market anytime soon: At the pace of the last 12 months, Windows would retain a majority share for another 25 years.
As in November, both Windows XP and Windows Vista lost share in December, while Windows 7 gained ground. Unlike in November, however, Windows 7 was unable to make up for the decline in Microsoft's older operating systems.
Windows XP slid 1.3 percentage points in December, its second-largest one-month decline ever. (The record remains November, when XP lost 1.4 points.) Vista, meanwhile, lost 0.7 of a percentage point, a single-month record, to end at 17.9%. December was the second month in a row that Vista lost share, and the third in the last four months, a trend that points to a permanent decline as users abandon it for Windows 7.
Still, the bulk of Microsoft's losses since the Windows 7 launch on Oct. 22 have been from Windows XP; the eight-year-old OS has lost 2.7 points in the last two months, while Vista has lost only 1 point.
Microsoft's newest OS, on the other hand, boosted its share by 1.7 percentage points to end December with 5.7%, meaning that approximately 1 out of every 18 machines on the Web ran Windows 7 last month. If it can keep up the pace of the last 60 days, Windows 7 will crack 7% this month, beating Vista to that number by six months.
Windows 7 also reached a milestone on Jan. 1, 2010, when it posted an 8% share for the day. The previous one-day record of 7.6% had been set on Dec. 27, 2009.
Apple's Mac OS X dipped for the second month in a row, finishing December with 5.1% after a decline of a statistically insignificant 0.01 of a percentage point. Most months, however, Mac OS X posts gains, not losses: December was only the fifth month of 2009 in which Apple's operating system lost share.
The winner, according to Net Applications: mobile operating systems, which accounted for 1.3% of all OSes powering devices that browsed the Internet in December. Although their shares remained small -- the largest was Java Platform, Micro Edition, with just 0.53%, followed by the iPhone OS with 0.44% -- month-over-month increases were dramatic in some cases. Google's Android operating system, for example, increased its share by nearly 56% between November and December, while RIM and the iPhone boosted their shares by 22% and 20%, respectively.
Net Applications measures operating system usage by tracking the machines that surf to the 40,000 sites it monitors for clients, which results in a pool of about 160 million unique visitors each month. It then weights share by the estimated size of each country's Internet population.
December's operating system data can be found on Net Applications' site.
Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter @gkeizer, send e-mail at [email protected] or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed .
Microsoft?s Windows 7 fails to staunch bleeding as Windows market share slide resumes
Microsoft's Windows resumed its usual losing form last month as the operating system's usage share dropped by about a third of a point even as the new Windows 7 posted a second straight month of impressive gains, Web metrics firm Net Applications said Friday.
Although rival desktop operating systems -- Mac and Linux -- essentially remained flat, mobile OSes, including Google's Android and Apple's iPhone OS, took up the slack created by Windows' dip. Mobile operating systems, said Net Applications, now power 1.3% of all the hardware that surfs the Internet.
Windows finished the year with a 92.2% share, down 0.3 of a percentage point. It was the eighth month in 2009 during which Windows lost share.
As it did in 2008, Windows' decline again accelerated in the second half of the year, when it lost 1.2 points of share. That compared to a drop of just 0.5 of a percentage point in the first six months of 2009. In 2008, Windows also lost more than twice as much share between July and December as it did in the preceding six months.
But the slip doesn't mean Windows is in any danger of losing its grip on the operating system market anytime soon: At the pace of the last 12 months, Windows would retain a majority share for another 25 years.
As in November, both Windows XP and Windows Vista lost share in December, while Windows 7 gained ground. Unlike in November, however, Windows 7 was unable to make up for the decline in Microsoft's older operating systems.
Windows XP slid 1.3 percentage points in December, its second-largest one-month decline ever. (The record remains November, when XP lost 1.4 points.) Vista, meanwhile, lost 0.7 of a percentage point, a single-month record, to end at 17.9%. December was the second month in a row that Vista lost share, and the third in the last four months, a trend that points to a permanent decline as users abandon it for Windows 7.
Still, the bulk of Microsoft's losses since the Windows 7 launch on Oct. 22 have been from Windows XP; the eight-year-old OS has lost 2.7 points in the last two months, while Vista has lost only 1 point.
Microsoft's newest OS, on the other hand, boosted its share by 1.7 percentage points to end December with 5.7%, meaning that approximately 1 out of every 18 machines on the Web ran Windows 7 last month. If it can keep up the pace of the last 60 days, Windows 7 will crack 7% this month, beating Vista to that number by six months.
Windows 7 also reached a milestone on Jan. 1, 2010, when it posted an 8% share for the day. The previous one-day record of 7.6% had been set on Dec. 27, 2009.
Apple's Mac OS X dipped for the second month in a row, finishing December with 5.1% after a decline of a statistically insignificant 0.01 of a percentage point. Most months, however, Mac OS X posts gains, not losses: December was only the fifth month of 2009 in which Apple's operating system lost share.
The winner, according to Net Applications: mobile operating systems, which accounted for 1.3% of all OSes powering devices that browsed the Internet in December. Although their shares remained small -- the largest was Java Platform, Micro Edition, with just 0.53%, followed by the iPhone OS with 0.44% -- month-over-month increases were dramatic in some cases. Google's Android operating system, for example, increased its share by nearly 56% between November and December, while RIM and the iPhone boosted their shares by 22% and 20%, respectively.
Net Applications measures operating system usage by tracking the machines that surf to the 40,000 sites it monitors for clients, which results in a pool of about 160 million unique visitors each month. It then weights share by the estimated size of each country's Internet population.
December's operating system data can be found on Net Applications' site.
Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter @gkeizer, send e-mail at [email protected] or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed .
Comments
If PCs sell, Windows will sell. Nothing is changing that in the near future.
Windows 7 will sell.Because it has following features,Ever since Microsoft?s PDC two weeks ago there has been a lot of Windows 7 news floating around the web. Microsoft has a lot of the OS on display and they even let select parties have access to an early build. This early build, number 6801, is pre-beta, but have some features (locked and unlocked) that are in the later releases. Windows 7 will not officially beta until some time in early 2009, but we have been playing around with it for a little while now and wanted to put up some video of it in action.
In this article we will just be focusing on certain aspects of the OS. For a great overview of Windows 7 you can check out this FAQ. In case you are curious, we have been testing with Windows 7 Ultimate.
First off, there are some UI changes. The Ribbon UI (from Office 2007) has been added to Paint and Wordpad. Additionally, the calculator was upgraded. So nothing too huge, but some nice incremental updates.
So far the change in Windows 7 that has generated the most press has been the Superbar. This is actually locked in build 6801, probably because it?s still in its very early stages, but someone figured out how to unlock it. Once it?s unlocked you can see that it?s flashy and functional, but not that different from the standard taskbar. The version on display at PDC was improved and it should be even better before the beta, once it?s closer to being finished.
Everyone has also been talking about Windows 7 landing on netbooks. After all, Microsoft?s solution for netbooks has been to put XP on them and that just won?t do once the new OS is out (XP will be about eight years old at that point). So we loaded 7 up on Lenovo?s IdeaPad S10. The installation went extremely smoothly, but I had a bit of trouble with WiFi down the road, some tinkering would probably solve this, but more examination is necessary. Aside from this, preliminary testing went through without incident. At idle there were 33 processes running and physical memory usage was 41% of the system?s 1GB.
Here are videos of the netbook booting up and shutting down:
As you can see, it?s not breaking any record but the times were reasonable. The computer navigated the operating system without any major slowdowns and though it felt sluggish during the installation of Flash it played Hulu.com videos perfectly, with CPU utilization floating between 30-40% (tested over ethernet). Windows 7 worked even better on the Fujitsu P8010, which has a bit more power under the hood.
Windows 7 is still in pre-beta so it?s much too early to make any judgement calls. Casual use of 6801 does not reveal many signficant changes from Vista, but they are there. Some are locked, most aren?t noticeable during general activity, and some we probably don?t know about yet. We do know that that we have an interesting year ahead of us! We should have some more testing and video one we?ve spent some more time with it.