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Aodhan Cullen, CEO of StatCounter, stated, "Despite Microsoft trying to keep it back in the kitchen, XP has retained tremendous loyalty over the last decade. However, it looks like the younger Windows 7 is now emerging in the Cinderella role."
Cullen added, "Vista was like the ugly sister that few wanted to dance with." Still, according to StatCounter's own figures, Vista's share has remained steady: It's said to have been 11.2 percent in October, essentially equivalent to the 11.02 percent share the firm cited in July.
Obviously, determing operating system share using web server statistics is an inexact science. Rival analytics firm Net Applications, based in Aliso Viejo, Calif., released its own Oct. 2011 stats suggesting that Windows XP has indeed declined, but not nearly as drastically.
Windows XP had 48.03 percent share in October, according to Net Applications, compared to the 49.69 percent share cited by the same firm for July. Windows 7, meanwhile, is said to have increased from 27.92 percent in July to 34.62 percent in October.
The Net Applications numbers suggest that while Windows 7 is gaining, it isn't necessarily doing so at the expense of the surprisingly resilient Windows XP. Other operating systems fell more drastically: Windows Vista went from 9.27 percent in July to 8.85 percent in October, for example.
According to Net Applications, Apple's Macintosh OS X 10.6 ("Snow Leopard") went from 3.76 percent in July to 3.62 percent in October. But in the meantime, OS X 10.7 ("Lion") burst on the scene -- it garnered 1.83 percent in October, bringing Apple's total desktop share to 5.45 percent for the month.
Linux, which wasn't mentioned by Net Applications in July, is cited by the firm as having had 1.19 percent share in August. We doubt the open source operating system has made inroads on the desktop, however: It appears to have been part of the "other" category in July (6.36 percent overall at the time) that has been deflated to 1.86 percent in the firm's latest statistics.
When it reported results for the first quarter of its 2012 financial year, Microsoft said more than 450 copies of Windows 7 had been sold. The company's Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live division (formerly known as the Client division) racked up $4.87 billion in revenue -- up from the previous quarter's $4.74 billion, and up 2 percent year-over-year.
The componentized, embedded-specific version of Windows 7 is known as Windows Embedded Standard 7. Meanwhile, Microsoft has other x86 operating systems based on Windows XP, including Windows Embedded Standard 2009 and Windows XP Embedded. We haven't seen data on relative market shares for these offerings.
Jonathan Angel can be reached at jonathan.angel@ziffdavisenterprise.com and followed at www.twitter.com/gadgetsense.
