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Windows 8 Passes Vista, Hits 5.1% Market Share

Posted by timothy on 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)."

12 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. Surpassing Vista by vikingpower · · 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.

    --
    Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
    1. Re:Surpassing Vista by dingen · · 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 · · 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 Trepidity · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm waiting for them to put out a press release when they hit 5x Linux market share.

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    4. Re:Surpassing Vista by wvmarle · · 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.

    5. Re: Surpassing Vista by Pino+Grigio · · 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.

    6. Re:Surpassing Vista by AmiMoJo · · 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.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    7. Re:Surpassing Vista by nukenerd · · 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.

  2. So it should by Ice+Tiger · · 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.

    --
    "Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
    1. Re:So it should by Unkl_Shvelven · · 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).
  3. XP - 37% with less than a year of support by blarkon · · 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.

  4. Re:Still sucks by sosume · · Score: 5, Funny

    You forgot to write Microsoft with a '$' .. you heretic.