Windows 7 & 8 market share rises, Vista and XP drop

OK. Some recent statistics came out for the last month for Windows. As you may or may not know, Microsoft has claimed that 40 million copies of Windows 8 were sold in the first month of Windows 8’s release existence [they didn’t have a comparison but for Windows 7, 60 million were sold in the first 2 months of existence in 2009].

The 40 million includes all formats and licenses. From tablet to smartphones to laptops to desktops, from upgrades [4 million claimed] to volume licenses to OEMs [i.e. came with the laptop, desktop].

If you look at the chart, it is claiming still just a 1.31% share as of November 25^th [oh that already exceeds all Linux distributions!] but has actually slowed a bit. It also looks still quite small for 40 million – but as I mentioned that includes volume licenses which usually has the biggest chunk of licenses sold. So I gather not many Windows 8 deployments which wouldn’t be surprising since most companies wait for the first service pack or maybe the first year.

What may still surprise some is that in the same period, Windows 7 numbers have also increased. Why is that? Well, I could theorize that some of those who are moving away from Windows XP and Windows Vista are instead going to Windows 7 – which is still available – than Windows 8. Some may be going to Windows 7 with the option of going to Windows 8 later.

Even then at the current trend – with Windows XP support dying in 16 months – some will wonder how fast the Windows XP numbers will drop as we get closer to April 2014.

[The chart, from Net Market share, is for non-mobile operating systems only.]