Linux only has 0.96% of the market share? I honestly thought there were more Linux users out there.

Hooray, Linux is almost 1%, that's me!

Only 3 percent of the market share? What about all the computers bought that have free Windows 7 upgrades.

All things considered, 1% is a pretty decent number of people. If 2 billion computers are being accounted for then that is 20 million people using Linux distros. Granted its a small share of the market but still a sizable group of people. What is more stunning to me is that Apple only has 5% compared to Linux's 1% and look at how ridiculously in your face Apple is with their advertising. I guess I thought MacOS was closer to 10% by now but it's probably just because I can't go 30 seconds watching TV without seeing one of those ridiculous Mac ads.

Also (I would hope) that people who get new comps with win7 on them dont just toss their old ones. Give them to relatives/friends as is or after (which I have done) putting linux on them.

This would have the result of increasing the total number of computers being tracked, and thereby pushing the percentages.

Give it a couple weeks and we'll be ahead of the Mac! Sorry, somebody had to say it.

LOL

I'm a bit surprised with the Linux numbers... I thought they'd be in the couple percent range.

I guess you could consider that OS X is really just another Linux variant in which case Linux boxes account for over 6%.

I'm also pretty shocked that for all the bad press Vista has gotten (some deserved, some undeserved), it's only cost Microsoft a couple percentage points in the market. I imagine that Windows will gain most of that back with Windows 7 - which I believe is almost as strong a product as Microsoft marketing is claiming it is.

Yeah, but does this include the millions out there that bought a PC with the free Windows 7 upgrade or bought Vista with the sole intention of using the free upgrade to Windows 7 coupon? A lot less consumers have actually payed for this OS versus previous versions because so many had a free upgrade path or at least a dirt cheap opportunity to buy it for next to nothing. I would be really curious to see how much of Vista's market share shrank in comparison for the same time frame to better gauge this.

I have to admit that for only possessing approx. 5 percent of the market share, Apple is quite good at making its presence known and making a lot of noise.

3% is damn good for less then 2 weeks it will fly up in the next few weeks as.
1 All the free upgrades get to the users and they upgrade ( most users wont drop what they are doing to upgrade)
2 Any it department\cio will hold of at least 30 days if not 90 before jumping in ( 30 for us to get the cost on this years accounting )
3 Alot of users wont upgrade till they need a new computer or windows rot sets in.
4 in some places getting a box copy is harder then you think.
5 alot of IT will hold off untill 2008 r2 and exchange\sharepoint 2010 are out first half of next year.

I don't really like that market push of Apple...
I'm still staying with Windows, even if Apple would sell it's OS for free!

You have to have installed the upgrade and be running Win7 for it to count.

I'm trying to install Mac OSX on my laptop but it is being a bear. I think once I get it installed I'll probably use it for about 15 minutes then shove my win7 hdd back in and call it a day. I see no use to mac osx besides that it probably has less virii which I'm not overly concerned with. I have been hearing people talk about mac osx specific software to do movie editing that windows doesn't have lately but I am clueless about that stuff. I just surf the web, email, use word/excel and play games. The mac kinda impairs some of that stuff.

In other words this info is reported by what OS is being used to browse the net. How the OS was bought (or downloaded) is not a factor. Coupons that shipped with a machine are also not a factor, only what OS is currently installed and in use.

People need to upgrade, NOW.

Yeah even if vista wasn't entirely usefull for every one of us, lets not forget about how great XP was/is still now, even tho' Seven it's taking the market, i encourage all the vista users to give a try to 7, do the upgrade, it's a good OS. I've never tried Mac OS; well may be coz it's less likely to run it on an average PC without doing some other stuff, but well.. if they want to sell their HW, it's they mistake... err i mean problem ^^
Ubuntu it's a wonderful OS i really mean it, it's performance it's outstanding if you are looking for a web browser/programming/workstation tool or else but gaming, if you have gamer's wood you are doomed. You could work around some games if you have some knowledge about Linux and with lots of help of forums and stuff, Linux community it's a very rich one into human resources.
That's why i think it's not a fair market but what can we do, games move this World! face it the best solution for gamers it's MS.. and i don't see that changing any time soon....

I'm a little surprised that the Windows 7 market share isn't higher. A lot of students could get it earlier than Oct 22, and I know a lot of the guys at my work have been using it for a while, myself included.

I'm also curious how much of that Apple 5% is actually Hackintoshes? That would be interesting. Still nice to see Apple's attempt to brainwash the masses seems to be failing.

A lot undeserved I think. I was using vista for quite some time, after SP1 it was perfectly ok as an OS, after SP2 I'd say it was a good os, certainly better than xp so long as you had moderately up to date hardware (like not over 6 years old). Apart from just a couple of major cock-ups (*cough* transfer speeds *cough*) the majority of complaints came about because of either bad support from third party software and hardware (partly MS's fault, but given how long it was in development, other manufacturers had plenty of time to get involved and sort their shit out), or because people just wouldn't accept that they couldnt keep running their out of date hardware.

As one review said, Vista was necessery, it was never going to be popular because it required a lot of change, necessery change, to improve both security, reliability and the low level graphics system. Windows 7 owes a huge part of its success to vista, and I am still amused when people slam vista but say 7 is great.

That said, I think MS knew they would take a hit over vista.

actually the most interesting comment is that mobile OS based browsers are starting to make a noticable impact in the statistics.

you guys need to read thats its just net applications to determine the marketshare. linux could be larger, Macs could be larger and windows could be smaller

I would really like to see how Google's OS is doing for online market share.

Read the entire article from Channel Register. There's a link in the Tom's article. Apple's OSX has been steadily gaining market share all year while Windows has been steadily losing share all year. The 3% Win 7 number isn't new Windows growth, it's just older versions of Windows switching to the newer version.

what? No OS/2? LOL!

Windows 7 must be doing very well. Prices are already down to $97-99 for OEM and Upgrade Home Premium versions. (LOL)

I am interested in how this relates to previous releases of Windows.
95 to 98, 98/2000 to XP, XP to Vista, ect ect.

What's so funny about that?

Interesting. Still a 2% drop in market share is nothing. Same with less then a 1% rise in market share.

So far so good for MS! After the fiasco that was Vista I can honestly say that I really do like W7. I think if MS can convince the public that this is a much improved Windows then it can really increase sales. I work in IT and I've been pushing to upgrade ever since 7 came out.

Monica S
Los Angeles Computer Repair
http://www.sebecomputercare.com

Or Windows could be higher, maybe quite a bit higher, in terms of extant machine installs because so many PCs are business PCs and business PCs probably hit the internet a lot less than all those coffee shop Macs. That's all netapplications is doing, measuring web hits. Apple must be making all it's money on obscene margins.

To be fair net applications changed it's methods a month or two back to more accurately show worldwide market share and when they did Mac share fell from over 7% to less than 5% and now it's gone back up over 5.

I'd wager that in total sales Macs are still about 3% worldwide. Sales figures are measured to and Mac keeps showing up in the 'others' category way behind every major PC maker including even a single little player like Toshiba. Prople use Macs on the web a lot and they tend to hold onto them a bit longer because all Macs are in the 'premium' category. I think this accounts for the descrpancy between sales of new Macs and net share reported here.

Damn, I quoted wrong post above.

Or Windows could be higher, maybe quite a bit higher, in terms of extant machine installs because so many PCs are business PCs and business PCs probably hit the internet a lot less than all those coffee shop Macs. That's all netapplications is doing, measuring web hits. Apple must be making all it's money on obscene margins.

To be fair net applications changed it's methods a month or two back to more accurately show worldwide market share and when they did Mac share fell from over 7% to less than 5% and now it's gone back up over 5.

I'd wager that in total sales Macs are still about 3% worldwide. Sales figures are measured to and Mac keeps showing up in the 'others' category way behind every major PC maker including even a single little player like Toshiba. Prople use Macs on the web a lot and they tend to hold onto them a bit longer because all Macs are in the 'premium' category. I think this accounts for the descrpancy between sales of new Macs and net share reported here.