New Figures Show Windows 8 Has Higher Market Share Than Expected

Recent figures have shown that Windows 8 experienced very slow growth in July – managing to only amount to 5.42% market share. However, the latest figures provided by StatCounter provide a different picture. They claim that Windows 8 now has a market share of 6.61%, much higher than the 5.42% estimated by Net Applications. This makes Windows 8 the fourth most popular operating system but catching up quite quickly with Mac OS X which powers 7.35% of global computers.

That said whether you believe Net Applications’ figure of 5.42% or Stat Counter’s figure of 6.61% either way we can see uptake of Windows 8 has been quite slow. Microsoft will of course be looking toward Windows 8.1 to increase uptake of their new operating system later on this year. A lot of OEM partners are excited about the prospect of Windows 8.1 after it reinstated the Start Button, something many consumers said put them off buying Windows 8. Microsoft will be hoping that the Windows 8.1 launch later this year times well with the retirement date of Windows XP next year in April and starts the transition of Windows users on old operating systems to a newer OS.

Image courtesy of Stat Counter