Windows 8′s usage share increases while XP’s and Vista’s declines

Windows 8′s usage share increases while XP’s and Vista’s declines:
The question why we are looking at usage statistics of operating systems and other software or devices comes up a lot and there are several answers to that. Developers for one should be interested in usage shares as it may provide them with information about markets they may want to target or avoid. If you are interested in technology, you may also gain valuable information from usage or market share information. It may provide you with the means to pick the right operating system or device for example, or provide others with the means to make that decision as well. Last but not least it paints a global picture of the PC industry as a whole and where everything is headed towards.
What makes this particularly difficult though is that the two companies that could release statistics that would be preciser than anything else, Microsoft and Google, choose to not release them. That leaves third party solutions that track only a fraction of the whole computing world.  So lets take a look at the various companies and their data:

• Netmarketshare sees Windows 8's usage share at 3.31%, an increase of 0.52% over last month's share. That's far from an impressive growth though. Windows 8 is trailing Vista's 4.99%, XP's 38.73% and Windows 7's 44.73% in the statistic. Windows 7 gained 0.22% this month while XP and Vista declined by by 0.26% and 0.18% respectively. So, nothing groundbreaking happened in the last 31 days.
• W3Counter's statistics are fairly similar. The service sees Windows 8 at 3.41% up from 2.72% the month before. Windows 7 is leading the operating systems list with 43.09% followed by Windows XP with 21.67 and Windows Vista with 5.01%. It needs to be noted that the service is tracking desktop and mobile operating systems in a single list.
• Statcounter sees Windows 8 at 3.9% up from 3.16% the month before. It is trailing Windows 7's 52.61%, Windows XP's 23.38%, Mac OS X's 7.29% and Vista's 6.13%.
• W3Schools has not published the statistics for March yet but it saw Windows 8 at 5.7% already in February which is a lot more than the other services saw the operating system at.
• Steam finally lists Windows 8 at 10.67% which is nearly three times as much as the other services see it at. It's market share increased by 1.04% in March.

If we look at the numbers we see a minimum growth of 0.52% over last's month, a maximum growth of 1.04% and a combined average growth of 0.74%. If we use the average growth to predict where Windows 8's market share will be in a year's time, we will come to the conclusion that it will be at the 10% mark after December 2013.
The growth is slower than Windows 7's growth when it came out. According to Statcounter, Windows 7's usage share was at 11.92% in March 2010 and at more than 22% exactly one year after release. The comparison is not entirely fair though, considering that Windows 7 was Vista's successor, an operating system that many considered a complete failure, while Windows 8 followed Windows 7, a highly successful and popular operating system.
The post Windows 8′s usage share increases while XP’s and Vista’s declines appeared first on gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials.

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