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Windows 7 Snags a Third of the OS Market (Survey)
Aggregate data collected by StatCounter shows Microsoft's latest OS, Windows 7, has snagged 33.22 percent of the overall OS market. This continues the trend of consistent growth the Windows version has had since its release in October 2009, increasing its share by 1.31 percent for the month of May.
Windows 7's share has grown as Windows XP usage continues to shrink. XP still leads all OSes, but is down to 45.83 percent. XP is scheduled to lose free security update support in April 2014.
Microsoft announced in April that it had sold 350 million licenses of Windows 7, with a majority of these estimated to be on the consumer side. As for enterprise migration, an April survey by Unisys Corp. found that 25 percent of IT professionals were evaluating upgrading to Windows 7, with only 21 percent of respondents saying their enterprises have already started or finished making the move.
"Organizations discovered for the first time during the Vista era that they actually could skip an upgrade," said Sam Gross, Unisys' vice president for Global IT Outsourcing Solutions, during a recent phone interview with Redmondmag.com. "IT said that we have something that's supportable and works, so we'll just sit this one out."
Third-party vendors have anticipated both the growing trend of Windows 7 growth and the enterprise's reluctance to upgrade, with a handful announcing new migration tools to help the jump from XP to Windows 7 at this year's Tech-Ed.
As for the rest of the OS market, StatCounter numbers show that Windows Vista, while still continuing to lose share, is still in third place with 12.53 percent -- a decrease of 6.93 percent, year-over-year. Both Mac OS X and Linux have remained relatively static, with 6.35 percent and 0.81 percent.
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| Courtesy: StatCounter |