Vista Share Drops for the First Time In Two Years

adeelarshad82 writes "Windows Vista lost market share last month for the first time in almost two years, a sign that users are already abandoning the oft-ridiculed operating system in favor of the new Windows 7. According to Web metrics firm Net Applications, Vista dropped 0.2 percentage points during September to end the month at an 18.6% slice of the operating system pie. Windows 7, meanwhile, gained 0.3 percentage points, its biggest one-month gain since Microsoft began handing out the new OS to the public in January 2009. Windows 7 powered an estimated 1.5% of all computers that connected to the Internet last month, also a record."

Comments

just wait...

[King-of-darkness]

you just wait for june next year when all the RC versions expire...

Re:Microsoft's done itself a lot of damage lately

[Alomex]

yeah I can use it just fine but it eats up a lot of screen real estate and it isn't better

I've used every windows systems in one form or another since 1987 and have generally found the criticisms of /.er types way overstated. The "awful unstable new versions" of Windows were usually better, more stable, easier to use than the previous one.

The are a total of three exceptions to that: Windows 2.0, Windows Me and Windows Vista. Windows 2.0 was a first release (Windows 1.0 doesn't really count). Windows Me was the last iteration of a dead end branch put out by the marketing department. Windows Vista on the other hand was driven by the tech types and was supposed to be better. The only noticeable difference in the user experience are useless changes for change's sake, and idiotic Allow/deny dialogues.

Vista's share doesn't matter

[Umangme]

Considering that Vista's share is less than 1/3 of XP's share (72% vs 19%), Microsoft will be more worried about getting people to move from XP to Win7. The 19% who have Vista really won't (can't, to be more precise) stay with Vista for too long. They will definitely "upgrade" (let's hope it's really an upgrade, not a regression).

Microsoft surely doesn't want XP's ghost to haunt them like IE6's ghost has.

where is OS 10.6?

[je ne sais quoi]

Another thing to point out is What the article states way down the page:

Mac OS X climbed nearly the same amount that Windows fell -- 0.25 percentage points -- to finish above 5% for the first time under Net Applications revised its methodology.

So, XP fell 0.2%, win7 rose 0.3%, but OS X rose 0.25%. Considering that the source for their data, hitslink, doesn't even have OS 10.6 up on their survey yet, I'd say the interpretation that Windows 7 is the one eating Vista's market share is unfounded, it's much more likely that it's a combination of losses to apple and win7.

Moreover, if you look at other stats like statcounter, the monthly data shows no decrease in Windows Vista adoption rate (i.e., still increasing usage share), but still shows OS X increasing its market share.

Basically, there's just as much evidence that it's snow leopard that's eating Vista's lunch as it is win7. Win7 installs could easily be coming from people who skipped vista.