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Windows 8.1 is now as popular as Vista

by on03 February 2014



This is apparently a good thing

Windows 8.1 is now as popular as Vista but apparently that is a good thing. Windows 8.1 was released in October and January was the third full month of availability for Microsoft’s latest operating system version. In just a month, it passed Windows Vista in market share. This is not difficult; Vista is about as popular as the Boston Strangler.

While Windows 8.1 is certainly growing steadily and eating into Windows 8?s share, the duo only managed to end 2013 with 10 percent market share. Windows 7 is still the most popular OS out there. The latest market share data from Net Applications shows that Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 barely made progress in January 2014, gaining a combined 0.09 percentage points (from 10.49 percent to 10.58 percent). More specifically, Windows 8 fell 0.26 percentage points (from 6.89 percent to 6.63 percent), while Windows 8.1 gained 0.35 percentage points (from 3.60 percent to 3.95 percent).

Windows 7 lost 0.03 percentage points down from 47.52 percent to 47.49 percent. Unlike in November, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 combined did better than Windows 7 in both December and January. Windows 8, which saw its biggest gain in August at 2.01 percentage points and its biggest loss in November at 0.87 percentage points. It is continuing to slip. Vista fell 0.31 percentage points from 3.61 percent to 3.30 percent, giving Windows 8.1 the opportunity to pass it. Windows XP continues its slow death after falling below the 30 percent mark at the end of 2013. The latest figures show it increasing 0.25 percentage points from 28.98 percent to 29.23 percent.

In 2013, Windows lost share every month except for March, July, and November. In January, Windows slipped 0.01 percentage points (from 90.73 percent to 90.72 percent). OS X gained 0.14 percentage points (to 7.68 percent), while Linux slipped 0.13 percentage points (to 1.60 percent).

Net Applications uses data captured from 160 million unique visitors each month by monitoring some 40,000 websites for its clients. StatCounter is another popular service for watching market share moves; the company looks at 15 billion page views. To us, it makes more sense to keep track of users than of page views, but if you prefer the latter, the corresponding data is available here (Windows 8 is at 7.34 percent).

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