Windows 10 Overtakes Windows 7 S Market Share For The First Time

It did not take long for Windows 10 to eclipse Windows 8’s user base, but Windows 7 remained the foremost desktop platform after Microsoft released Windows 10. However, Windows 10’s user base continued increasing throughout 2018. For the first time, Netmarketshare data highlights that Windows 10 has a larger user base than Win 7.

Netmarketshare’s latest Operating System Share by Version graph shows that Windows 10’s market share rose to 39.22 percent in December 2018. Windows 7’s percentage share dropped to 36.9 percent in that same month. Thus, Windows 10 is above 7 on a Netmarketshare graph for the first time.

Windows 7’s percentage share stood at 43.44 percent on Netmarketshare’s graph in May 2018. However, 7’s share steadily dropped down throughout last year. That might largely be due to the fact that Microsoft will stop supporting Win 7 from January 14, 2020.

Furthermore, Microsoft released Office 2019 for Windows 10 in 2018, which is not compatible with Windows 7. Thus, 7 users need to upgrade to Win 10 to utilize the latest MS Office suite.

The Netmarketshare graph also shows that Mac OS X 10.3’s market share has dropped to 2.84 percent. That represents a drop of 3.24 percent from its 6.08 figure in October 2018. Consequently, Windows 8.1 now has the third-highest share with a figure of 4.45 percent.

StatCounter’s graph highlights that Windows 10 overtook Win 7 last year. Windows 10 has had a higher market share than Win 7 for almost one year on StatCounter’s graph.

The StatCounter chart now shows a much wider gulf between the two platforms with Windows 10’s share at 52.36 percent compared with 7’s 35.63 percent.

However, both Netmarketshare and StatCounter figures now highlight that Windows 10 has the largest market share. Microsoft also confirmed in 2018 that Win 10 is installed on more than 700 million devices.

So there can be little doubt that Windows 10 is now the world’s foremost desktop platform.