Number three or number two?
The first month of the new year is in the books and with it comes a new ranking for Windows 10, now either the second or third most popular operating system in the world, according to updated data by Net Applications.
If you count Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 as separate operating systems, then Windows 10 is in third place. Otherwise, its second only to Windows 7, still the big man on campus. But no matter how you slice it, Windows 10 is now on more PCs than Windows XP, a fan favorite thats managing to cling to a double-digit percentage.
Heres how things shake out based on the accounting methods of Net Applications:
- Windows 7: 54.47 percent
- Windows 10: 11.85 percent
- Windows XP: 11.42 percent
- Windows 8.1: 10.4 percent
- Mac OS X 10.11: 3.44 percent
- Windows 8: 2.68 percent
- Mac OS X 10.10: 2.33 percent
- Others: 5.4 percent
Microsofts goal is to have Windows 10 installed on 1 billion devices two to three years post launch. Now six months into that time frame, Windows 10 is installed on more than 200 million active devices, according to Microsofts latest official count. At this rate, Microsoft will likely reach its goal somewhere between the two- and three-year mark.
The numbers at StatCounter differ slightly but paint a similar picture. According to StatCounter, the OS landscape looks like this:
- Windows 7: 46.66 percent
- Windows 10: 13.65 percent
- Windows 8.1: 11.67 percent
- Mac OS X: 9.03 percent
- Windows XP: 7.98 percent
- Unknown: 3.8 percent
- Windows 8: 3.15 percent
"Microsofts determined promotion of Windows 10 seems to be having an impact," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. "However, there remains a lot of loyalty to Windows 7 and it will be interesting to see if it becomes the equivalent of XP which, 14 years after launch, refuses to lie down and still has a 8 percent global share in terms of desktop internet use."
How does the adoption rate compare to previous versions of Windows 10? After six months on the market, Windows 8 was sitting at just 5 percent, while Windows 7 raced out to 13.5 percent, just behind the 13.65 percent Windows 10 now finds itself at.
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