Windows 8 Passes Vista, Hits 5.1% Market Share

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Windows 8 Passes Vista, Hits 5.1% Market Share

Posted by timothy on Sunday June 30, 2013 @09:02PM from the we-can-finally-sleep-nights-again dept.

An anonymous reader writes "With the first half of 2013 now over, Windows 8 continues to grow its share steadily but slowly, while Windows XP and Vista decline. In fact, Windows 8 has now passed the 5 percent mark, as well as surpassed the market share of its predecessor's predecessor, Windows Vista. The latest market share data from Net Applications shows that June 2013 was an impressive one for Windows 8, which gained 0.83 percentage points (from 4.27 percent to 5.10 percent) while Windows 7 fell 0.48 percentage points (from 44.85 percent to 44.37 percent)."

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Surpassing Vista by vikingpower · 2013-06-30 21:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

Not that much of an achievement. If that is all they can announce... Sounds to me like the German Army bulletins toward the end of 2nd World War.

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1. Re:Surpassing Vista by dingen · 2013-06-30 21:10 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  And mind you: it's not passing Vista's market share as it was in October 2007 (equally 10 months after launch as Windows 8 is now). It's just passed Vista's *current* market share.
  No consumer-oriented version of Windows has ever seen such a slow adoption as Windows 8 is showing now.
  
  --
  Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
2. Re:Surpassing Vista by RogueyWon · 2013-06-30 21:23 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  How did the takeup of ME compare? That was billed as the "consumer oriented" OS at the time (while 2000 was billed as the "business product").
  If we're at the kind of point where comparisons to ME feel appropriate, then Win8 really is in trouble. At least with ME, there was always a strong sense that it was never intended as much more than a short-term stopgap. Win8, on the other hand, has been pushed very hard as "the future".
3. Re:Surpassing Vista by lxs · 2013-06-30 21:35 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Windows 9? You think MS can go three full Windows releases without changing the naming scheme? That hasn't happened since Windows 1,2 and 3.
4. Re:Surpassing Vista by Trepidity · 2013-06-30 21:37 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I'm waiting for them to put out a press release when they hit 5x Linux market share.
  
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5. Re:Surpassing Vista by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · 2013-06-30 21:45 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  How long do you suppose Microsoft can hold out until Windows 9?
  More to the point, how long do you suppose WE the users can hold out until Windows 9?
  I dread the day my Win 7 machines die because I'll have to replace them with those blasted Win 8 machines. I'd much rather stretch my existing machines' life until Microsoft gets its act together and I can safely skip the Win 8 experience. Exactly the same way I went straight from XP to Win 7 and avoided Vista.
  
  --
  "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
6. Re:Surpassing Vista by wvmarle · 2013-06-30 21:54 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  What may be more notable, is the staying power of Win XP.
  Win XP is with 37% market share not far behind the 44% of Win 7 (two major versions ahead of XP, and released almost four years ago by now). If all computers that had been replaced would have received Win 7, the market share of Win 7 compared to Win XP should be much higher: if the average lifetime of a PC is five years, some 80% of the computers that were in use back in summer 2009 have been replaced by now. Yet newer-than-XP versions of Windows are far behind that number.
  And while it's market share is falling, it's falling only slowly, with a 0.5% loss over the past month. And I really can not imagine just 0.5% of computers are being replaced in a month - at an average lifespan of 5 years for a PC there should be nearly 1.7% replacement rate per month. So is it that XP computers are all just old ones that are not being replaced? Or is it that XP is being installed on new computers? Both are about as unbelievable, yet I can't think of another reason XP's market share is falling so much slower than the computer replacement rate.
7. Re: Surpassing Vista by Pino+Grigio · 2013-06-30 22:49 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Only corporations, small business, medium sized business, large business, government, home users (especially gamers). Apart from these people, it's dying, yes.
8. Re:Surpassing Vista by KingMotley · 2013-06-30 23:21 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Or it could be that the statistics are being pulled from sources that have unusually slow adoption rate. I typically check the statistics that I see come from netmarketshare and the like from a couple other sources, and I've always noticed that they lag considerably from both another source, and my own statistics from visitors from my client's web sites.
  For example, my statistics show 6.6% for Windows 8 , 7.88% for Vista, 30.28% for XP, and 54.69% for Windows 7.
  netmarketshare shows 5.1% for Windows 8, 4.62% for Vista, 37.17% for XP, and 44.37% for Windows 7.
  My other source shows 12.7% for Windows 8, 7.2% for Vista, 7.9% for XP, and 66% for Windows 7.
  There is quite a bit of difference between the three, but ntmarketshare typically seems to poll from placed that hang on to their systems longer than most, I'm guessing some very large businesses as their primary source, which skews their numbers.
9. Re:Surpassing Vista by Joce640k · 2013-06-30 23:57 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  I've got lots of perfectly good hardware (scanners, printers...etc) that never received a Windows 7 driver. I have to keep at least one XP machine around just for that reason.
  
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10. Re:Surpassing Vista by AmiMoJo · 2013-07-01 00:02 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  No consumer-oriented version of Windows has ever seen such a slow adoption as Windows 8 is showing now.
  That's a worthless measure of success for Windows. 99.9% of copies are sold on new PCs or as part of bulk licences in businesses. The former is no indication of Windows 8 acceptance, merely of new PC sales. The latter is no indication of Windows 8 acceptance, merely IT spending and the amount of lag between release and companies rolling out new operating systems.
  Conversely because almost 100% of Windows 7 users installed SP1 that doesn't mean SP1 was a huge success, merely that it was put forwards as a critical update and people had no reason to reject it.
  
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11. Re:Surpassing Vista by ArcherB · 2013-07-01 00:10 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I've got lots of perfectly good hardware (scanners, printers...etc) that never received a Windows 7 driver. I have to keep at least one XP machine around just for that reason.
  My nephew is staying at my place for the summer and brought an old Vista machine. Rather than run a network cable to his room, I gave him a USB wireless-N adapter. He tried for a couple of weeks to make it work while a cat-5 cable ran across my office floor into his room. The other day, he decided to install Linux on the system after using my machine every time his crashed. We downloaded Mint and installed it. Once it was up and running, I plugged in the USB adapter, unplugged the network cable, punched in my wifi password and BAM! He was on the network and reading reddit. (I guess reddit is what kids do these days).
  Anyway, the point is that all the drivers you may need are probably included in some of the latest Linux distro's out there. You might want to try booting off a live CD and try it out. If you're not a gamer, I see no reason to be stuck running XP or any other Windows based system.
  
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12. Re:Surpassing Vista by nukenerd · 2013-07-01 00:35 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  How did the takeup of ME compare? That was billed as the "consumer oriented" OS at the time ...... At least with ME, there was always a strong sense that it was never intended as much more than a short-term stopgap.
  As I recall in those days, queues of people camped on PCWorld's doorstep for a few days before each new Windows release (like they do for Apple stuff today).
  
  I do not recall ME being regarded as a stopgap. The name "ME" even suggested it was forward looking. True, those who knew better recognised it as W95 on a Zimmerframe - one last fling by MS to extract money from the consumer market with a pointless upgrade. I never ran ME, but understand that it was actually worse than 98.
  
  Also, there was no gap to stop. Windows NT was already available and had been runnable on entry-level PCs' for some time (and did, in the form of XP just a year later). It was games compatibility that kept the crappy 95/98/ME bloodline going, but MS needed to tell the games writers to port their stuff to NT/XP sooner or later; and they should have done it sooner.
13. Re: Surpassing Vista by hairyfeet · 2013-07-01 10:26 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Sorry I have to throw a flag, bullshit on the field. One of the reasons I advised my customers against Windows 8 is how many programs i found that run fine on 7, crap themselves on 8. some of it was hardware like drivers not playing nice, some of it was software, it ended up just a mess.
  That is why I hate posts that say "Oh its just 7 with Metro" because no, its really not. since i'm not on the dev team i can only guess and say that all that mobile and tweeting twits for shits changed too much of the background, all I know is that its less stable, has more stupid "senior moments", almost as bad as vista in that regard, and while the Win 7 units have been running since RTM I've had to do multiple "refresh my PC" jobs for customers which I still think that tech was added to cover for a corruption bug they couldn't nail down.
  I do have to say how much I find the irony moist and delicious on how many "keyboard commanders" try to cover for the OS...which was DESIGNED FOR TABLETS and therefor in its natural state doesn't HAVE a keyboard for the commanders to try to cover up for its failings! IMHO if your OS requires you to memorize commands like its fricking 1989? You have failed at OS design and should be ashamed. This guy says it better than I can but one thing I agree on, if you need a Win 7 PC to google how to use the Win 8 PC? Its a fail of epic proportions.
  
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So it should by Ice+Tiger · 2013-06-30 21:08 · Score: 5, Funny

It's the best OS MS have produced in my opinion, runs well and like the UI and yes I'm running a desktop computer! I use OSX, iOS, Ubuntu and Windows so maybe am used to switching UIs so learning Metro was no big deal compared to someone who has only seen the Start button all their computer life.

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1. Re:So it should by gigaherz · 2013-06-30 21:17 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Well if you compare it with OSX, iOS and Ubuntu's Unity, metro is not THAT bad. It's when you compare it with a proper desktop environment like Xfce or Windows 7's Aero that Metro is terrible.
2. Re:So it should by somersault · 2013-06-30 21:29 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  If it was really a "new paradigm", ie the whole OS was built around it, it would actually be fine. The problem is that Metro feels more like a hacked on 3rd party replacement for the Start Menu, than something that works well with the Windows desktop.
  
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  which is totally what she said
3. Re:So it should by JaredOfEuropa · 2013-06-30 21:34 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I have to agree: it runs well. Booting is exceptionally fast; in Windows 8 I'll be running on the desktop while my older (but more powerful) machine is still loading the Windows 7 login screen. I dislike Metro though; I suppose I could make it into something usable, if I spend the effort to nicely organize my favorite apps on the Metro canvas, but why should I? The old Windows start menu does that for me in a very usable way with zero effort (other than installing the tool to bring back that start menu). Besides that, I like to use the desktop like my real desktop, to organize and sort files I am working on. The Metro canvas is useless for that.
  
  A real problem with Metro is that so many basic actions are hidden or counter-intuitive. You're doing something wrong if people have to search for help on how to close an app or manage windows on your OS. And before they can even try and search for that info, they have to use another computer to search for help on getting the damn address bar to appear in IE! People's hatred for Metro doesn't just come from having to learn a new UI, a lot of it is due to (piss-)poor design.
  
  --
  If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
4. Re:So it should by Unkl_Shvelven · 2013-06-30 22:31 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  The reason why Windows 8 boots so fast is that it doesn't actually boot. When you "Shut Down" from the charms bar, it actually just kills your user session and hibernates. You can turn off fastboot and see for yourself.
  
  --
  regular man whom love computer (Also, fuck beta).
5. Re:So it should by Yaotzin · 2013-06-30 23:34 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  It works just like the start menu, only bigger. You use just like you would the regular start menu, type whatever you want to run and press enter. Don't see how this can be such a huge gripe. I haven't switched to Win8 yet but from what little I've used it, I couldn't find much of a problem with it apart from poor network drivers.
  
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  Error: No error occurred
6. Re:So it should by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · 2013-07-01 01:35 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  You are forgetting users like my step mother who can't figure out why her new laptop acts like someone's phone instead like her computer at work. If she wanted something that acted like a smart phone she would have bought a smart phone.
  
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  Time to offend someone
7. Re:So it should by gnasher719 · 2013-07-01 01:45 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  You are forgetting users like my step mother who can't figure out why her new laptop acts like someone's phone instead like her computer at work. If she wanted something that acted like a smart phone she would have bought a smart phone.
  Years ago my daughter bought a laptop which came with the then brand new Windows Vista. She called me and asked if I could put Windows on it for her...
Huh by Ignacio · 2013-06-30 21:18 · Score: 4, Funny

I guess cramming it down people's throats really *is* an effective way to gain marketshare...
XP - 37% with less than a year of support by blarkon · 2013-06-30 21:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

The real news here is that an OS that has less than a year of support left is at around 37% market share. XP is falling at about 1% per month - but will still be a substantial part of the market (probably at least 25%) when Microsoft stops releasing software updates.
1. Re:XP - 37% with less than a year of support by dingen · 2013-06-30 21:30 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  A lack of support might push a few businesses to adopt a newer version of Windows, but I doubt people at home will care. Actually, a lack of updates might be seen as a feature (no reboots!) by those who are still holding on to a 12+ year old operating system.
  
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  Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
2. Re:XP - 37% with less than a year of support by Teun · 2013-06-30 23:19 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  12 y/o? Yes the name XP might be but over the years the various service packs changed it dramatically.
  I would count the age of up to date XP installs from the issue date of SP3, early May 2008.
  
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Re:Still sucks by sosume · 2013-06-30 21:36 · Score: 5, Funny

You forgot to write Microsoft with a '$' .. you heretic.
Regular users by Loki_666 · 2013-06-30 22:13 · Score: 4, Insightful

I bet even non-techie users don't like Metro.... for a start, where will they store their documents now? The desktop and the recycle bin were the usual two favourite locations pre Win 8. :P