Windows Continues To Lose Desktop Market Share After Windows 8.1 Launch
The latest figures from market analytic firm Net Applications suggest that Microsoft’s Windows based operating systems are continuing to lose ground to Linux, Mac OS and other operating systems. The figures clearly show a sharp drop off of nearly 1% between July and October of which the vast majority of the lost 0.9% went to Linux and Mac OS. In fact Linux gained around 0.31% market share in the same July to October period while Mac OS gained about 0.54%.
While the numbers may seem relatively small in absolute terms such low percentages equate to large numbers. I think what is disturbing from Microsoft’s point of view is that since November 2011 their market share of the desktop market has continually declined, totally a cumulative loss of 1.5% for the 2 year period. Windows 8.1 didn’t even manage to reverse the trend of decline, in fact the figures suggest it accelerated it as the biggest drop off in Windows market share was from July to August, the month when the consumer preview for Windows 8.1 was broadly accessed by the public. Any ground lost by Microsoft is ground gained by Mac OS and Linux. These figures do not even factor in competition from Android or iOS they are just purely desktop operating system market shares.
Image courtesy of Net Applications
why am I not surprised. Microsoft is going down the tubes unless they can really come up with a bran new redesigned OS that is basically a new future windows xp that was so successful. Example Windows Gamer Edition with 50% performance increase.
Win 8 has just gained a bad rep and it’s not really that bad. I wonder if they’ll learn from their mistakes with the next OS. They should really develop two separate OS’s, one for touchscreen & mobile, the other for desktop with keyboard & mouse. Keyboard & mouse desktops aren’t going anywhere just yet.