Windows 8 Market Share Overtakes Vista, Still Lagging Behind XP And 7

Windows 8 is continuing its slow climb up the charts in market share, finally surpassing Windows Vista to claim 5.1% of all desktop operating systems during the month of June, while Vista settled for 4.62%. Windows 8 has been steadily gaining ground month by month, gaining almost an entire percentage point from May.

However, while Windows 8 now has Vista in its rear-view mirror, Windows XP and Windows 7 are still kings of the desktop OS market share. Windows 7 claims 44.37% of the market share, while Windows XP sits at 37.17%. Windows XP has been steadily on the decline when it owned 42.52% of the market share last year in August. However, Windows 7 seems to remaining firmly staked into the ground and has gained around two percentage points since August of 2012.

As for Apple's OS X, the operating system has an overall market share of 7.2%, but that's counting all OS X versions. When compared to just the latest OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Apple owns just 3.14% of the OS market share. However, this is quite the step up from last year in August when Mountain Lion only claimed 1.41% of the market share.

However, on the browser front, Internet Explorer keeps rising. In June, IE claimed 56.13% of the web browser market share, with Firefox and Chrome in a distant second and third, respectively. Both Firefox and Chrome have been rising and dipping, but haven't made any significant progress over the past year, whereas IE's market share is rising and rising.

Windows 8.1 is out in preview mode right now (check out our hands-on), and Microsoft is hoping to win customers over with the latest update. Windows 8.1 brings back the Start button, but not in the way that many users were expecting. However, the Redmond-based company believes they'll be able to penetrate the market even more with Windows 8.1, but only time will truly tell.

VIA: PC World

SOURCE: NetMarketshare