The latest market share data from Net Applications has shown that, for the first time since the launch of the operating system, Windows 7 market share has declined, dropping to 44.48% in January from 45.11% the previous month. Meanwhile, Windows 8 market share is up, having gained 0.58% in January to post an overall market share of 2.36% - this shows marginally slower growth for Windows 8 in January, with the operating system"s December market share rising 0.66%.
Unsurprisingly Windows Vista continued to see market share loss, falling to 5.24% from 5.67% in December, while Windows XP saw a gain of 0.43% in January to post a share of 39.51%. Overall, Windows still sits on a commanding lead with 91.71% of the market (down 0.03%), with Mac OS second (7.08%, up 0.01%) and Linux third (1.21%, up 0.02%). Windows 8 still doesn"t have the newest iteration of Mac OS X beaten, with OS X 10.8 installed on around 2.44% of computers.
The numbers from Net Applications indicate that Windows 8 is growing mostly at the expense of Windows 7, while Google"s Chrome OS - which according to Acer has had "amazing" sales - still hasn"t managed to register as a separate OS (instead it forms part of the Linux market share).
Source: Net Applications via: The Next Web