Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system may still be struggling to find a place in the enterprise, but overall, the OS is gaining in popularity. Recent data from NetMarketShare shows that Windows 10 gained nearly two percentage points in desktop OS market share between July and August this year.
NetMarketShare shows that Windows 10 has been the second most popular operating system for desktop computers all year long. In January, Windows 10 narrowly edged out Windows XP for the number two spot. As of August, Microsoft’s latest OS has 22.99 per cent (up from 21.13 per cent in July) of the total desktop OS market.
It still has a long way to go to catch up to the most popular OS version, though. Windows 7 is slowly seeing its market share eroding away, but it still holds a 47.25 per cent market share. Rounding out the top five are Windows XP in third place (with 9.36 per cent of market share, down from 10.34 per cent in July), Windows 8.1 (7.92 per cent in August, 7.8 per cent in July) and Mac OS X 10.11 (4.38 per cent this month, 4.69 per cent last month). Other operating systems account for 8.11 per cent of the market.
In general, Windows is still the top operating system for desktop computers. When all versions are combined, Windows has 90.52 per cent of the total market share. Mac remains in a distant second place with 7.37 per cent of the desktop OS market, followed by Linux at 2.11 per cent. Other operating systems, such as FreeBSD and OpenBSD, don’t even register on the scale.
On mobile devices, Android is the most popular OS choice with 66.87 per cent of the total market share. Apple’s iOS is a distant second with 27.2 per cent of the total mobile OS market share. Windows Phone comes in at 2.3 per cent, but IDC recently predicted a sharp rise in Windows-based tablets over the next few years. When mobile operating systems are broken down by specific versions, though, Apple iPhone takes the top spot at 19.12 per cent, followed by Android 4.4 at 16.18 per cent, Android 5.1 at 14.55 per cent, Android 6.0 at 12.67 per cent and iPad at 7.99 per cent. Other mobile OS versions make up 29.49 per cent of the total market.