back to article Windows 7 busts the 3 per cent share barrier

Microsoft's kind of make or break Windows 7 launch pushed the OS to a stonking 3.48 per cent market share by the end of last month, figures from tracker firm Net Applications show. The firm's figures showed Windows 7 popping up on 3.67 per cent of PCs it encountered on the 31st. While the figure might appear minuscule, it …

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  1. WhoIsThis?
    Paris Hilton

    What makes up the rest?

    What OS makes up the remaining 0.29% (if I've done my calculations correctly)?

    In January this figure stood at 0.55%.

    Is it RISC OS?

    Paris because as I write this no-one else has used the icon on this story.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    no title

    "Overall, Windows OS's took 92.52 per cent of the market for October, with the Mac taking 5.27 per cent, and Linux on 0.96 per cent."

    More than likely these are just *US* figures.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    So...

    after a fortnight it has nearly overtaken the system that can't even be given away for free and that of the one tied to the nice shiny hardware.

    MS must really be quaking in their boots

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    Interesting

    So what you're saying is, in a month Windows 7's market share is about to overtake the entire marketshare for OSX? Maybe Apple users will get minority protection from the EU....

  5. TeeCee Gold badge
    Gates Horns

    Re: Interesting

    Bloody funny more like.

    From the amount of Hot Air on the subject exuded by the fanbois round here you'd have thought that we were on the brink of a MacOS / Linux war for the desktop as they vie to be the successor to the moribund Windows.

    Meanwhile, in the real world.......

    I have to admit I'm a little cheesed off at this. Not because of MS handing arses on plates to all comers from the opposition, but I was rather hoping that 7 takeup would be a bit of a damp sqib so they'd be forced to cut the sodding price. Guess I'm screwed.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    I have to concede.

    It just works. I've been slagging it off for months, and I was wrong. Vista made me SO ANGRY that I couldn't see straight.

    I installed it on one of my Acer 8930Gs, after my daughter destroyed the boot sector, (containing the previous Vista.) All the ACER Crap disappeared in seconds, and it even let me trash the stupid twin partition setup that came on Disk 1 as Acer's default setup.

    Apart from having to go to Acer to get the Nvidia driver, and to somewhere else for the finger print reader - which it told me about, it all came up.

    It then proceeded to recognise every device on my home's internal Lan, and installed drivers for the lot. It just all worked. I wonder how long it will take me to forgive MS for the last 8 months when I was forced onto Vista.

    The only thing that doesn't work on the 8930G is the Blu-ray, but Acer Deluxe didn't work anyway, and I no longer care because I've just got a Samsung box from Tesco for 179 quid.

    I have to say, it isn't any more efficient than Vista, but instead of the box running at 15% CPU, slowly because Vista was f*cking something up, it runs fast at 78%. Copying over the network doesn't crash the network cards either.

    It even found my HP printer in my office downstairs, meaning I don't have to put all the HP software on it, something I find intensely irritating.

    I bought enough licenses to do everything in the house, and I'm glad, because it ABSOLUTELY F*CKING FLIES compared to Vista. What Google Chrome must be like if it's 18 times as fast as IE8 I just can't imagine. I'm going to try it on my old Dell 8200 box.

    What I really need is Office standard 2007 five licences for 150 quid, and I'd do mine too. Until then I've got to find my old 2003 copy, before I upgrade my own box.

    Microsoft were right, it only takes three working months to get used to the absolutely sh*t Office interface. I still can't see the point of it. They should sack their entire business analysis department.

    All it needs is a powertoy that lets me record meetings and it's perfect, and my Coffee Bean background that lets me rest my eyes by making it a sird.

  7. Hedley Phillips

    PC World - 7 & hardware selling fast

    I was in PC World yesterday, I know, I'm sorry but their HP laser printer was £50 cheaper than anywhere else... and the staff their said that Windows 7 and new hardware was flying off the shelves like never before.

    I still don't see what 7 does that XP doesn't but at least we can start to forget Vista.

  8. Rob Beard
    Welcome

    They'll be another one soon...

    ... when I can be arsed to backup my other half's PC and install her student copy of Windows 7.

    However, for that 1 copy of Windows 7, I've also installed two copies of Ubuntu 9.10 and two copies of Debian Lenny with, well another copy of Linux (not sure what yet) on a low end PC which isn't capable of even running XP that well so it wouldn't have any hope with Windows 7 (or Ubuntu 9.10!).

    Maybe this 3% is saying something though... like everyone is fed up with Vista and will do anything to get away from it (okay, I'm good at pointing out the obvious).

    Rob

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    does this percentage

    include the 15 million or so using the RC and beta that doesn;t stop working for a while yet?

  10. Tim Robson

    Market Share

    I'd wadger this survey is of people browsing the web with those machines, not of all machines on the web. That means that Linux likely has a bit higher market share than what is listed, since a number of web servers run on Linux variants rather than Windows Server.

    On the other hand, in biologic terms, Linux is still a mutation in the user market- it needs to cross the 1% threshold to be considered an allele instead of a mutation, if my memory of my years ago Biology classes serve correctly.

  11. RMartin

    Shares

    I run a website that gets about 50k visitors per month, and its fascinating looking at the logs at how tenacious old versions of MS stuff can be. In October, XP is still the biggest OS amongst my visitors with about 50% share, followed by Vista on 22%, Windows 2000 on 6% and Windows 7 accounted for 1% but its been growing. Amazingly 0.3% of visitors were using Windows 98!

    Mac OS X on the other hand was at 4%, iPhone on 2% and Linux on 0.8%.

  12. Christopher Martin

    What's this percentage in total number of machines?

    And how does it compare to the number of boxes running Conficker?

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    The share in my household is about to fall

    because I'm about to go back to XP, as Windows 7 refuses point blank to play nicely with the peripherals which cost 3 times as much as the OS.

    MS won't care, because they made a sale, but I might return the unused copies I got to go on the other two rigs (or resell them, seeing as they were dirt cheap).

  14. Pop
    FAIL

    Installed on my computer

    and to be honest, the only good thing I have to say about it is that it isn't Vista.

    Everything that was sluggish in Vista is still sluggish in 7, including file copies on my particular hardware/network.

  15. Pete 2 Silver badge

    quel barrier?

    So what's this magical, mystical barrier that confronts operating systems when they approach the 3% market share, mark? Do they have to start discounting heavily? Do they need to bring out a massive update in order to get to 3.0001% or what. I think we should be told what new problems will present a barrier when a product reaches this level.

    Or is it really just "level" and not a barrier at all?

  16. N2

    @Hedley Phillips - PC World

    ... and the staff there said that Windows 7 and new hardware was flying off the shelves like never before.

    PC World are hardly likely to say Windows 7 is shite are they?

    18 months or so ago I had some spotty little insect trying to tell me Vista was so absolutely amazingly brilliant ...

  17. ThomH

    @TeeCee, AC above him

    I think the issue is more, as El Reg has pointed out, that Ballmer the idiot is forever giving credibility to the Mac by mentioning it when really he could safely just completely ignore it. Irrespective of the software, the sales model just doesn't scale. The normal rule is that whoever is in first place never mentions whoever is in second, but this prattling fool can't keep his mouth shut.

    I've installed Windows 7, having skipped Vista — it's easily my new favourite Windows. So much better looking than XP, even in GDI-style compositing mode, pretty soon I'll be able to use other people's computers without thinking I'm using some sort of Tomy toy. I also quite like the ribbon (it's really just a pull-down with pictures, why so controversial?), so it's nice to see that pushing back into the core apps.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    I switched to Ubuntu

    Have been running Vista since it came out, but the Windows 7 UI to be overly intrusive. I cannot the things I wanna change to my preferred style. So I formatted (within 30-40 minutes might I add) and installed Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala). I'm much happier now; for me Windows is heading the wrong way (towards Mac OS) which is what most people want, but not me.

  19. Bob 18
    Boffin

    Value of Linux

    This thread is not at all bout Linux, but some of the comments are. I think it's worthwhile pointing out that the value of Linux --- even desktop Linux --- goes way beyond the installed base of Linux desktops. That is because Linux is not just one piece of software; rather, it consists of about two thousand different packages that typically get installed together on a Linux system.

    Many (most/all) of the packages that came out of the open source movement along with the Linux kernel have eventually been ported to Windows and Mac. Although only a few of these packages end up on a typical end-user PC, many people do use these pieces of software, for a wide variety of purposes, on PC's and Macs --- especially in just about every market sector outside the most basic of home and office users. And this success dates back to the 1980's first with the emergence of the GNU tools --- long before there was even a Linux to run them on.

    Linux (and the free/open source software movement) doesn't actually have to make it onto any desktops in order to succeed. It has already succeeded. If people choose to run their free/open source software on Windows, it's probably because that's giving them better value at the time than running it on Ubuntu.

  20. apexwm

    Figured skewed?

    Most of the numbers I've seen recently show Mac using closer to 10% of the market, with Windows below 90%, on a global scale. Linux seems on with this though, at 1%.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    "market share"?

    "Overall, Windows OS's took 92.52 per cent of the market for October, with the Mac taking 5.27 per cent, and Linux on 0.96 per cent."

    Ah, the delightful definition of "market" MS (and ElReg, as it seems) uses. OEM-products are not exactly "sold", but bullied and over 98% of MS-products are OEM. Definetely not comparable products, when you a) cant' buy a machine without MS-tax and b) you can't make &sell _any machine_ without paying MS for it, no matter if uses MS-system or not. (In theory, you can. But then MS won't sell you anything, your choise.)

    Talking about "market share" in this kind of situation is like calling (the old) Soviet Union democratic country because they had elections and people could vote.

    Only MS units actually sold are retail versions and there aren't many of those around. I've sometimes seen a couple of packages and even those were all _upgrades_, not full versions.

    MS wisely won't tell you that. ElReg not telling that is a shame.

    I suspect that more people _buy_ Linux (retail) than MS retail package, _even when Linux can legally be aquired free_.

    Also: "Market share" isn't usage. When MS sells same OS three times (XP,Vista,7, essentially like Fedora9, 10 and 11) and it's just one user even there's three items "sold". (See bullying, above)

    More realistic amount would be "users per machine"*amount of machines", if you really want an honest view about OS users distribution in the world, real definition of "market share".

    Even corporations that have most of their desktops on Windows, have their infrastructure and servers on Linux/Solaris/AIX, thus making the amount of users almost 1:1, not "0,94%" like MS bullshit department is trying to tell.

    Which is more "market share", 100 machines and 100 users or 2 machines and 3500 users? (The latter is a real life example: University's email-servers. Obviously not running MS software.)

    Or one machine running 12 virtual machines, a couple of hundred users _each_? In MS-speak that's _one_. _Or none_ if it uses free software. And those thieves have guts to talk about "market share".

    Who defines what "market" is? As MS sells usually only "one user, one licence"-type of licences, they of course want to count _only_ the amount of licenses (not sold, but bullied), not users. And some media then falls to this trap.

    Remember Intel and the megahertz hype and you'll understand that "a license" doesn't measure anything in the real world, it's just a marketing buzz word.

    Not that it matters much, "market share" doesnt' apply to things that are not in the market, even if some idiot tries to do that.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    How about comparing full version sales to full version downloads?

    "On the other hand, in biologic terms, Linux is still a mutation in the user market- it needs to cross the 1% threshold to be considered an allele instead of a mutation"

    I'd bet that people who bought Windows retail, full package, professional, are more rare than those who bought respective Linux. And that would be comparing apples to apples: One full professsional retail package to another similar.

    OEM or upgrade versions aren't the same thing at all.

    Have anybody ever even seen one for sale? For Windows, of course. Linux-versions are always full retail pro versions.

  23. Lars Silver badge
    WTF?

    "site visitors to live stats customers"

    "browsers of site visitors to live stats customers"

    What does that mean. Have I ever during more than 10 years and several machines with Linux ever visited such a "live stats" ???.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Installed today

    Really don't do the upgrade. I did Vista64 on a 6 week old machine to Win7. None of the device drivers worked until they had been deinstalled/reinstalled (serveral times in one case) and frankly you'd be better wiping the drive and starting from fresh.

    Whoever came up with the "network profile" crap that thinks its connected to a new network when you connect it to a new switch EVEN WHEN its logging into a domain controller needs executing. Not sacking, just top the tosser.

    If this is the great hope of MS after Vista then they are shit out of luck. Nobody in business with half a brain would "upgrade" to Win7 from XP - if you're going to make that much of a change then I'm sure it'll occur that Linux is free, deployment costs aren't but nor are they with MS.

    3/10 for Win7. Really.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @does this percentage

    yes id imagin so, but forget the initial figure, look at the growth figure, the improvment its quite something.

    take in to account VMs as well tho, i have a 98 VM on one of my larger PCs used for old stuff, that might explain some of that 0.3%

  26. Robert E A Harvey
    Gates Horns

    @TeeCee

    I agree, the price is just silly. I won't be paying it till I am forced.

    I suspected at one point that Vista would 'cost them the farm', but they seem to have pulled something out the hat.

    But given that 7 is 'vista with knobs on' demand might fall once the pent-up demand has been met.

  27. Big-nosed Pengie
    FAIL

    I call shenanigans

    Linux < 1%? I think not.

    See "1% Linux Market Share = 100% Dishonesty" - http://blog.linuxtoday.com/blog/2009/05/1-linux-market.html

    In 2003 ZDNet reported "Market researcher IDC expects to announce within weeks that Linux PC market share in 2003 hit 3.2%, overtaking Apple Computer Inc.’s MacOS. And the researcher expects Linux to capture 6% of this market by 2007. That’s still tiny compared with Microsoft’s 94% share." (http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=5334)

    "If anything, the Linux desktop market share has continued to increase and is probably currently at 8-10% and rising. Dell and the other PC OEMs wouldn't have invested in selling Linux pre-installed if it appealed only to less than 1% of the desktop market."

  28. Quix
    Dead Vulture

    Microsoft losing ground really quick.

    No matter how many Microsoft keyboards, Xboxes and Zunes it tries to flog, Microsoft is losing market cap share to Apple

    http://tinyurl.com/ddbxew

    Give it one to 3 years and Apple will be bigger then Microsoft!

    For those stuck with a PC and needing to upgrade, why not try boot 132 loader and a legal copy of snow leopard for your PC? LEAN MEAN, FAST AND STABLE.

    That or just buy a used Macbook with intel processor for $300 from Ebay or buy a new Apple if you can afford it.

    Never going back to the expensive upgrade path of Microsoft.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Megaphone

    @RMartin

    Us Linux users are twice as good as those... errr.. win98 diehards.... We do have 50% of the clout of windows 7. That sounds bad too... stupid statistics! The measure that's what's wrong.

    Um what's the demographic of your website? Kiddies?

  30. mrweekender
    Flame

    Erm...

    @AC 14:47 "It just works. I've been slagging it off for months, and I was wrong." - Bollocks! If that's the case why are more and more people starting to complain about slowdown after 4-5 weeks of use. Shill, shill, shill, troll!

    @Hedley Phillips "I was in PC World yesterday, I know, I'm sorry but their HP laser printer was £50 cheaper than anywhere else... " - Jesus Christ, you shop in PC World.... sorry but that just sounds like an advert to me.

    Face it Windows is still crap, MS are shutting projects down right left and centre to deal with lost revenue.

    If the Linux crowd manage to get their shit together, MS and Apple are both f*cked!

  31. Displacement Activity
    Thumb Down

    Sanity check...

    3.5% of *what*? The W7 launch was 13 days ago; it's completely inconceivable that it could already have 3.5% market share. What is the "market"? 2 billion PCs? So MS has already sold *70 million* copies of W7? And how many corporates have already installed W7 - exactly none? This has got to be bollox.

    @Hedley Phillips: get a grip. I got a Compaq box from PCW 2 or 3 years ago, when Vista had just come out. I belatedly realised that it was little better than a doorstop, and then spent a week arguing with some spotty yoof in the local store, who insisted that Vista was the best thing since sliced bread, it was fantastic, and no, I couldn't have a downgrade to XP. The pile of sh*** is still sat there, it won't update to SP1, and I can't be arsed to re-install Vista. If any store ever deserved to go bust, it's PCW.

    Linux: Ok, no-one in their right mind would use it as a desktop system. On the other hand, I've got 2 real and 10 virtualised Linux boxes sitting behind an X server running on my single XP box, and only the XP box ever sees the internet.

  32. Keith Oldham
    Linux

    Re Sanity check

    Well I've got 4 Linux desktops/fileservers that fulfill my needs brilliantly and 1 XP laptop.

    It's the Windows box I worry about letting near the Internet

    I've only got 1 program that I need Windows for and when I've worked out how to get round that the XP box gets it !! (OpenSuse that is)

  33. Matt Bradley

    @Lars

    Livestats is network traffic analysis tools. That chances are that if you've ever been on the internet with your Linux installs, then YES: you have been logged (and your user agent / OS config reported) by one or more livestats installations during your web browsing sessions.

    Hope that clears that one up for you.

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