Windows 10 Finally Overtakes Windows 7 In Market Share
Tobenna Ezike
Ever since Microsoft launched Windows 10 in July 2015, they’ve waited for the time when it’ll gain more market share than the people’s all-time favourite – Windows 7. Apparently, that time is February 2018. According to the web analytics company StatCounter, Windows 10 has finally surpassed Windows 7 in global market share; Windows 10 now runs on approximately 42.78% of Windows PCs while Windows 7 comes in close with 41.86%.
Windows 10 has had a fairly steady growth since its 2015 release, but its adoption rate was most likely marred by the bad experience its users had with Windows 8 and 8.1. As a result, most people stuck with the more familiar Windows 7 and even when Microsoft offered everyone free upgrade to Windows 10, they still wouldn’t budge. Also, the letdowns of Windows 8 made Windows 7 a preferred choice for business users, who form a bulk of Microsoft’s customer base.
Although Windows 10 is making some progress, it might be falling short of Microsoft’s expectations. The Redmond giant intended that by 2018, the OS would be running on a billion devices including desktops, laptops, tablets, Xbox, etc. Two years later, the OS is reported to be active on roughly 600 million devices. Not entirely a bad number in my opinion
However, since Windows 10 represents the future in desktop OS and computing, it’s adoption rate can only get higher because Win 7 is quite aged (8 years old), and Microsoft already have pulled mainstream support for the operating system in January 2015, so users won’t receive any new features. But security updates will be offered until 2020. Check out the article on why you should upgrade to Win10.
The older operating systems are still around but are slowly phasing out with less than 10% market share. Windows 8.1 has 8.7% share, Windows XP has a 3.36% market share, and even Windows Vista still retains some 0.74% of users.
Featured Image Credit: www.theverge.com