If you wanted Windows 10, it looks like you've already installed it

[steven36]

Market share for Redmond's latest hits SEVEN per cent but growth slows markedly

Windows 10 looks to have won about seven per cent of the world's desktop operating system market.

That's The Reg's back-of-the-spreadsheet calculation after running our eye over September’s data from Netmarketshare and StatCounter, the two services we regularly eyeball to see what's going down on the desktop.

Here's the tale of the tape for Windows 10 over the last four months.

To grok that data, remember that Windows 10 launched on July 29th. With that in mind we can see that August saw plenty of growth, but things slowed rather markedly in September.

The losers are Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, as the graphs below show both have dipped markedly since Windows 10's debut.

When we crunch the ratings companies' numbers we find Windows 7 is down about an average of four per cent and Windows 8.1 is down around two, results that neatly match the Windows 10 result.

Adding another one per cent market share during September is no mean feat: any company that achieved that outcome over a single month would be proud of the outcome.

Is Microsoft? The company always finds a reason to talk up a Windows launch, so in public it will be saying everything's gone just swimmingly. The Reg suspects it's not a stellar launch. Windows 8.1 did not, by all accounts, win many friends in business. Corporate PCs are slower to update than their cousins at home, as canny sysadmins wait for bugs to be splatted and hatch plans for orderly migrations. Yet the majority of Windows 8.1 users have stuck with the old, frustrating, operating system, despite Windows 10 being free. Why?

Windows 7, meanwhile, is stable and doesn't need to be replaced in a hurry on the business desktop, no matter what Microsoft might say about Windows 10's magical empowerment powers. Might the mess of Windows 8.x's interface be deterring the rump of Windows 7 users from going anywhere near a tiled interface?

We'll have another look at both firms' market share trend data next month.

Source

[davmil]

You think maybe?

"Might the mess of Windows 8.x's interface be deterring the rump of Windows 7 users from going anywhere near a tiled interface?"

[straycat19]

I don't believe their numbers. Their count is skewed by the 17 installs I did in VMs and activated and those all my friends did in experimenting with the RTM version. None of them are actually in use now nor are they actual upgrades or installations. And I have lost count of the number of systems I have rolled back for people since 1 August so all those were counted also. The only way they can count them is by activations and it is obvious, that number lies.

[steven36]

I don't believe their numbers. Their count is skewed by the 17 installs I did in VMs and activated and those all my friends did in experimenting with the RTM version. None of them are actually in use now nor are they actual upgrades or installations. And I have lost count of the number of systems I have rolled back for people since 1 August so all those were counted also. The only way they can count them is by activations and it is obvious, that number lies.

They don't count them by activation ..They count it by you're user agent when ever you visit the sites that have there counters on them . If a person rolls back it will show up they rolled back. For example If you're using Windows 8.1 it will show up Windows NT 6.3. Only way you can spoof it is to change it are block there counter with a script blocker.

[Karlston]

Let's put this in perspective shall we...

Those stats show that only 8.2% (Netmarketshare) / 3.7% (Statcounter) of all W7 users ditched W7

And that only 12.5% / 15.4% of all W8.1 users ditched Windows 8.1

Or put another way...

A huge 91.8% / 96.3 & of all W7 users rejected W10 and stayed with W7.

And an enormous 87.5% / 84.6% of all W8.1 users rejected W10 and stayed with W8.1

Not such an impressive start for Windows 10 as Microsoft seems to think, eh! :)

[Avitar]

Come on man, WIN 10 aint that bad. The only thing is that you have to use Windows Firewall Control to block any IP originating from Microsoft and tweak some settings to stop information leaking. After you get rid of the spying, it's super fast.