Microsoft’s latest operating system Windows 7 has surpassed the marketshare of Vista for the first time. According to figures, Windows 7 is approaching 20pc global market share.
In just over a year since its release to manufacturer (RTM), Windows 7 has overtaken Windows Vista for the first time in total market share worldwide, according to web analytics firm StatCounter.
The firm’s research arm StatCounter Global Stats reports that, in August, Windows 7 took 19.4pc total market share, compared to Vista’s 17.7pc worldwide. XP continues to dominate the global market with 55.4pc.
StatCounter specialises in website traffic analysis and provides free lifetime stats and free detailed analysis on the latest 500 hits.It recently announced a major upgrade which increased the log quotas to its paying members by a minimum of 100pc at no extra cost.
“Africa, Asia and South America are driving the increased market share for Windows 7,” Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter, said.
“Although there has been extremely good growth for Windows 7 in Europe and North America, it has yet to overtake Vista in these regions.”
Vista continues to outperform Windows 7 in North America with a market share of 24.7pc compared to 20.7pc for Windows 7 (Windows XP 40.6pc). In Europe, the gap is even closer with 22.7pc for Vista compared to 21.9pc for Windows 7 (XP 47.5pc).
“The installed base of Windows Vista was very low in Africa, Asia and South America and now users in these regions are upgrading straight from Windows XP to Windows 7, giving rise to this leap in market share,” Cullen added.
The data is based on an analysis of 15 billion page views for August 2010 collected from the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites.
