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Windows 8 and 8.1 Pass 15% Market Share, Windows XP Drops Below 20% Mark
An anonymous reader writes Everyone is well-aware by now that Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 have not seen the impressive adoption rate of their predecessor. Yet the duo had a particularly good run last month, finally passing 15 percent market share together. Together, they owned 16.80 percent of the market at the end of October, up from 12.26 percent at the end of September. Windows XP meanwhile dropped a whopping 6.69 points to 17.18 percent. The biggest catalyst for these changes was most likely back to school sales in September, which are better reflected in the data after students use their new machines for a full month.
Come on, it's 2014, and slashdot is still using that broken windows avatar for Windows stories.
Not only it that "joke" not funny anymore, it's not even true. Windows might not be great, but its hardly broken like in the days of 95 or 98.
It is long past time you grow up and use the correct logo.
FTA: "These gains did not come at the expense of Windows 7, which still managed to grow 0.34 points to 53.05 percent."
s/©//g
It's interesting that while 8.1 is around 10%-ish, 8 is still about 5%. Considering 8.1 is a free update for registered copies of 8, how many of the un-updated copies of 8 are pirated versions?
What percentage windows has captured of the overall device market, instead of just the desktop market.
I wonder how many of Windows 8.X's sales are "forced", IE, preinstalled on a PC that a consumer bought because they needed a PC, not because they wanted Windows 8? Stipulating that the consumer is not a geek, and not aware that they might be able to ask for Windows 7 preinstalled instead?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I think there should be a Poettering cyborg for the Windows stories. Let me just fire up GIMP... dammit!
and I swore a lot less at Win98 than I did at 8.0. Win8.1 is useable, but still bites at your fingers now and again.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Based on past experience, most of those Windows 8 and 8.1 purchases are home and student based. Businesses are either exercising their Windows 8 downgrade rights and sticking with Windows 7 Pro, or holding out for a true successor, possibly being Windows 10.
Life is not for the lazy.
I thought linux is like 20%. One percent is sort of like "other" in my book.
You, sir, lie like a rug. ...Unless you never used Win98.
I wonder how many of Windows 8.X's sales are "forced", IE, preinstalled on a PC that a consumer bought because they needed a PC, not because the
Pretty much any purchase that isn't a Mac or a chromebook. Yeah there are few linux folks out there but they are pretty much a rounding error in the pre-install desktop market which accounts for the vast majority of machines sold.
win8 - perfect spooky Halloween present!
I don't know where the author obtained his stats, but the XP numbers are probably bogus if the study was based on web statistics. There are probably a lot of people who are still using XP, but on an off-line basis.
You'd struggle to get me back to 7 now. And no, I don't use a start menu addon.
Well that puts you firmly in the minority then. I have a Windows 8 machine at work and I absolutely hate the interface. Clumsy, non-intuitive, and obviously designed for a tablet rather than a keyboard and mouse. Hides stuff off screen when it isn't necessary and provides no hints that it is there. I'm perfectly happy trying something different so long as it is an improvement. Windows 8 most definitely is not an improvement. Microsoft is trying to mash together tablet and PC interfaces which in principle is fine but they really, really struck out on this attempt. Maybe they'll get it right in a future version.
I thought linux is like 20%. One percent is sort of like "other" in my book.
Linux's market share in desktop PCs is pretty much a rounding error. Always has been and that isn't likely to change soon. You'll find plenty of linux in mobile and servers but not in desktop or laptop PCs.
So, by the time Windows 9 comes out, there may be as many people using Window 8 as using Windows XP.
I have to say... I have three Windows 8.0 Pro licences that I purchased at launch when they were cheap... I've tried it several times, never could stand it, just wasn't finished...
Recently I bought a new Dell laptop that came with Windows 8.1 and was pleasantly surprised at the improvements.
While my main machine will probably run Windows 7 until Windows 10 comes out, I've upgraded several other machines from 7 to 8.1 now using my existing licenses.
I have to say, had Windows 8 launched as 8.1 stands today, I think most of the hate would have been gone, it is "cleaned up" and an improvement in many ways over 8.0.
Looking forward to 10...
Apple OS represents a culture and not a technical solution.
The popularity of MacBooks at Linux and Unix conferences indicate you are wrong. Mac won the desktop Unix battle. Consumer friendly GUI on top, with a lot of off-the-shelf commercial support. BSD Unix underneath, most FOSS applications run just fine on Mac OS X. Very few apps are Linux specific.
Personally most *nix things that I need to do can be accomplished on a Mac quite nicely. I mainly use Linux for embedded devices and headless servers sitting in the closet. I have a dual-boot PC with Windows for gaming but I rarely boot into Linux.
and other sub $150 windows 8.1 tablets.
Linux still lags behind MS Vista, by a 2:1 margin (Vista enjoys about a 2.5% total market share, Linux about 1.4%), but still Linux advocates declare Linux is poinsed to take over the desktop market any day now!
Ken
Maybe he's referring to 98SE. That was fairly decent, but I agree - 98 was dreadful with it's "Active Desktop" that constantly died.
How many posts do we need restate the obvious: Nearly all windows installation are for new machines. Only fringe users like to upgrade older hardware. For most it is just a waste of time and an invitation to discover obscure issues.
"Windows 8.1 is better than Windows 7." Which is like saying that a turd rolled in glitter is better than a plain turd. I use Windows 7 every day, 8 quite often and I've spent a lot of time with the 10 preview. Still to this day, Ubuntu is a breath of fresh air and OS X is a total dream in comparison.
YES, Windows 8/8.1 are f********ing great.
E.G. When you got a laptop with windows 7 and you were sad. You had to setup a dual boot because you wanted to have the joy of windows' games and features and ease of use from time to time, but when you were serious you were working on Linux ofc.
Now, you get a laptop with windows 8 and things are pretty clear. No more dual f'ing boots, no "God damn it I forgot to pick the right OS on GRUB2"... now you are just relaxing on boot times, because you have only one choice...just Linux.
i would rather deal with unsupported XP with viruses than the steaming dog turd called windows 8. it was the most infuriating UI I have ever had the displeasure of using, and I lived through the rise and fall of macromedia flash websites
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I would posit that new sales (where the consumer doesn't have a choice) is responsible for the Win8 numbers rising. From the feedback I get from my friends and acquaintances it doesn't seem to be from consumers making a "choice" that they want Win8. And I really have to question XP dropping below 20%, at least in a business environment. I generally see about 50/50 between Win7 and XP among our customers and the businesses we come in contact with. And everywhere I go XP still appears to be the dominant OS behind retailer's POS systems. We have upgraded a fair number of our customers to Win7 Pro (as many as we could convince) but there is still more than 20% of them on XP. Not sure who "venturebeat" is, but look around, the numbers just don't seem quite accurate.
nice fallacies. Did you try?
The last one depends on what software and how you defined 'faster' and 'better.' A lot of software that ran fine on 7 will not start at all on 8 because of the new dwm, and that is even with ACT shims.
Windows 8.1 sends my every search query to Microsoft if I don't block them by IP at the DNS, router, and hosts file levels. It regularly disables my wireless card so that it can reset it and verify my connection by reestablishing the link with Microsoft's privacy-invading servers. Windows 8.1 has a kind of crash I've never seen in any Windows version until this one: memory management. As in, with Windows 8.1 Microsoft has actually failed to correctly produce a functioning, reliable core operating system component.
I rarely talk bad about Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 because it's nigh on impossible to lament its failures without people popping out of the woodwork to detract from conversation. I bet this post will be marked "troll", but I'm not pretending, I'm not trying to elicit a negative emotional response, I don't want to start an argument, and I'm not just bashing Microsoft. MS has done many great things as well, since Windows 8 was released. Accessibility to assistance in learning Windows programming is better than ever before, as one example, and their support and development communities have grown in quality by leaps and bounds.
Now let's mention the one and only discussion we've seen about Windows 10 having a keylogger embedded in it while overlooking that random forum posters have said that it's because the OS is in beta but Microsoft has never confirmed that the keylogger would be removed.
Windows 7 is still the best operating system for consumers. Linux suffers from inaccessibility to software, though steps are being taken to correct that now. Apple OS represents a culture and not a technical solution. Windows still reigns as king, but Windows 8 and onward thus far remain to potentially dethrone it.
I totally agree. Let me give a concrete example. The problems with 8.1 are more than just "it looks different, it doesn't have a start menu".
In my job I need to use Visual Studio 6 on a few bits of legacy C/C++ code. VS 6 has worked on NT4, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 (both 32 and 64 bit builds of Vista, 7, 8) (, after a few (well known) oddities in the installer process). Once installed, it works fine on all of these OSes.
Install it on Windows 8.1 however, and it crashes everytime on startup (even with compatibility settings on etc. google has tales of woe from others on this). There's a workaround but it's horrible - it involves renaming the executable and copying a hodge podge of files from the VS 6 Sp6 disk by hand.
That's a real world example of brokenness in 8.1 - and yes before anyone tells me, I know it, it would be good to get off VC++ 6!
But the good news is that there's always a new version in the pipeline to fix that for you.
It's just a shame that when companies stop supporting software that they aren't forced to put the source for the old versions in the public domain. That way anyone happy with the old stuff can keep on using it.
And if the new stuff really was any good people would prefer to buy and use it.
What we have now is companies trying to force people to use new crap (Windows 8 I'm looking at you) and unsuprisingly the vast majority of people are not interested in the new stuff because it's crap.
If source for old software had to be put into the public domain it would massively, massively raise the bar for the quality of newly introduced software.
I think that is people start realizing the dangers of closed-source software and no legislation to protect privacy, it is conceivable that Linux could, given the right circumstances, capture the home desktop market. However for that to happen it needs more ease of use...Yes I know they have many strides in the past decade but it is not quite there yet..... Revealing your source code is great but it's not enough (for now) However, the corporate desktop market is quite simply a lost cause for the time being. As long as there are legacy apps that are used for business purposes that require Windows, it will not be going anywhere anytime soon. Apple can try all it wants but it has failed to penetrate in any significant way simply due to cost....When you have 30,000+ employees that Apple tax is quite prohibitive. Add to that you often times you still need to buy a Windows license to run in vmware or parallels to be able to do your work.... The day will come, where all applications (of significance) will adopt the Software as a Service model.....that is likely when we will finally be able to free ourselves from the stranglehold M$ has had on us for the past few decades...
I purchased a new laptop that had Windows 8.;1 already installed on it, and I am sure they included that in their stats. However, I will be replacing it with Windows XP tonight if I can, but if I have trouble, then I will install Linux.
But that was the first thing you turned off anyway to save some of that 32Mb of ram for actual work
I'm perfectly happy trying something different so long as it is an improvement.
May I suggest that you try "something that is not windows" then? There are at least 2-3 good alternatives, you know.
...don't encourage them...
I'll keep my PS/2 peripherals and sound card thanks, and I like my RAM on DIMMs / So-DIMMs.
I will consider an AIO if it meets these requirements, else regular PC hardware does, even if you want the latest 10 watt CPU.
Yeah, if you didn't mind your computer crashing several times a day. All of Windows x.x and 9x sucked.
Obnoxious!
I was looking for a single word that accurately described Windows 8, and you just came up with it. Thanks!
Well, that's great. Kanye West might be able to run faster than Taylor Swift, too, but he's still an asshole who publicly bitches/walks out/rushes the stage and grabs the mike/ruins their moment when somebody else wins a music award.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......