The April Numbers are In!

[Vince53]

They’re here! The numbers for April 2016! And…

Windows 7 still tops the list, but it has finally dropped below half, with 48.79% of all computers.

Windows 10 is #2, with 14.35%. That’s an increase of .2% (That’s not too good).

XP is at 9.66%

Every version of Mac OS X combined is 9.19%. This is a 1.41% increase over last month, making OS X the fastest-growing operating system of April.

8.1 is at is 9.16%

Windows 8 is at 2.95%. Between them, 8 and 8.1 outnumber all Macs combined.

Windows NT is at 2.54%

At 1.56%, Linux is still ahead of Windows Vista at 1.34% Why are people still using Vista? If your machine is powerful enough, Vista works well. Not as well as 7 or 8, but on a powerful enough machine it works well.

I suspect that the statement that Windows 3.1 is at .4% is a misprint. The numbers add up correctly, but 3.1 hasn’t made the list in a long time.

And Windows 2000 is at .03%.

89.25% of all machines use some version of Windows.

 

[Wookiee]

Out of curiosity, where exactly are these statistics coming from? They're sort of meaningless without knowing what sort of study they come from.

 

[Vince53]

Valid question, Wookiee.

http://netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0

NetMarketShare is the most widely-accepted internet counter. It has chosen websites that represent the total internet, giving extra weight to sites used by heavily-populated countries.

 

[Vince53]

And elsewhere in the news, Chrome has passed Explorer as the most popular browser in the world.

Although 30.55% of all Windows 10 users use Edge, it dropped back into fifth place behind Safari. Firefox is #2.

With less than half of all Windows users using Explorer, it has been joked that Explorer is the world´s #1 browser for downloading another browser. Its success is mostly due to inertia--it comes with Windows, it works well, and so a lot of people don't change.

 

[Wookiee]

Just to let you know, Explorer and Internet Explorer are entirely different programs (Explorer is Windows' file manager). While people generally use "Explorer" to mean IE (and the context generally implies it), when discussing in an IT context it's incorrect to use it that way.

Also just to shed some influences on those statistics - Certain countries in Europe get Windows version "N" which does not default to (or package) IE, Windows Media Player, and a few others, due to their regulations in regards to coercing people into only using one software rather than offering choices.

 

[Vince53]

Good point, Wookiee. Incidentally, Windows 10 changed "Explorer" to "File Explorer." More advanced than Explorer, once you get used to it, File Explorer is a better system.

 

[mnorian]

They’re here! The numbers for April 2016! And…

Windows 7 still tops the list, but it has finally dropped below half, with 48.79% of all computers.

Windows 10 is #2, with 14.35%. That’s an increase of .2% (That’s not too good).

XP is at 9.66%

Every version of Mac OS X combined is 9.19%. This is a 1.41% increase over last month, making OS X the fastest-growing operating system of April.

8.1 is at is 9.16%

Windows 8 is at 2.95%. Between them, 8 and 8.1 outnumber all Macs combined.

Windows NT is at 2.54%

At 1.56%, Linux is still ahead of Windows Vista at 1.34% Why are people still using Vista? If your machine is powerful enough, Vista works well. Not as well as 7 or 8, but on a powerful enough machine it works well.

I suspect that the statement that Windows 3.1 is at .4% is a misprint. The numbers add up correctly, but 3.1 hasn’t made the list in a long time.

And Windows 2000 is at .03%.

89.25% of all machines use some version of Windows.

I had looked up Windows usage percentage last August for my "Day in the Life of Win10" thread from PCmag online and it looks like Windows is loosing share to Mac OS X:

August 2015--PCmag,com

 

[Wookiee]

I had looked up Windows usage percentage last August for my "Day in the Life of Win10" thread from PCmag online and it looks like Windows is loosing share to Mac OS X:

August 1015--PCmag,com

Though, of course, the statistics will have adjusted over the last 6 months, it is worth noting that your graph seems to include iOS, meaning it seems to be checking phones/tablets as well. The page Vince is using is only taking desktop (for lack of better word since laptop would also be counted, no doubt) into account.

 

[mnorian]

Though, of course, the statistics will have adjusted over the last 6 months, it is worth noting that your graph seems to include iOS, meaning it seems to be checking phones/tablets as well. The page Vince is using is only taking desktop (for lack of better word since laptop would also be counted, no doubt) into account.

That's what I was doing; comparing the numbers of Aug to those now that Vince was showing; Windows share went from 91.32% to 89.25%. And if his figures were not taking ios into consideration it's hard to understand Macs 9.8% market share; where Aug figures were at 5.06Mac X plus .70ios for a total of 5.70%.

 

[Wookiee]

That's what I was doing; comparing the numbers of Aug to those now that Vince was showing; Windows share went from 91.32% to 89.25%. And if his figures were not taking ios into consideration it's hard to understand Macs 9.8% market share; where Aug figures were at 5.06Mac X plus .70ios for a total of 5.70%.

But the numbers are skewed just by including Java, iOS and "Other" (which I can only assume is Android). According to this site iPhone sales across 2015 (to and including Q3) were 183.17 million. Even if you take that number and discount other factors (second-hand sales, people with iPhones already that didn't repurchase, etc.) you're still dealing with a large amount of people. Those two graphs cannot be fairly compared because the statistics are skewed. Not to mention, if we're including mobile platforms, do these numbers include Windows Mobile into "Windows"? Do they include Windows 8 RT?

There is no fair way of comparing the two graphs because they add up to 100% but take different aspects into account. It's like taking a graph of Apple/Orange/Pear sales and then comparing it against a graph that compares Apple/Pear/Grapes/Strawberries - if the apples sold more in the first lot, then it's likely they're going to have a larger portion in the second lot - in a graph you're not seeing raw numbers, you're seeing fraction representations.

 

[mnorian]

But the numbers are skewed just by including Java, iOS and "Other" (which I can only assume is Android). According to this site iPhone sales across 2015 (to and including Q3) were 183.17 million. Even if you take that number and discount other factors (second-hand sales, people with iPhones already that didn't repurchase, etc.) you're still dealing with a large amount of people. Those two graphs cannot be fairly compared because the statistics are skewed. Not to mention, if we're including mobile platforms, do these numbers include Windows Mobile into "Windows"? Do they include Windows 8 RT?

There is no fair way of comparing the two graphs because they add up to 100% but take different aspects into account. It's like taking a graph of Apple/Orange/Pear sales and then comparing it against a graph that compares Apple/Pear/Grapes/Strawberries - if the apples sold more in the first lot, then it's likely they're going to have a larger portion in the second lot - in a graph you're not seeing raw numbers, you're seeing fraction representations.

I think your right. The graph that PCmag made up is from the same company that Vince posted: Netmarketshare.com; I went there and tried to duplicate there results; but couldn't. When NMS says market share; I assumed they were talking about sales of new equipment; with the OS installed; but PCmag says they are using the number of hits on severs of different OS. And the graph make-up consul; says it was just Desktop OS' and did not have iOS in the list of OS'; so I don't know where PCmag got that chart from; maybe they made it up from the data from NMS; themselves.

It reminds me of an old quote from the 1890's from Mark twain: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

http://netmarketshare.com/operating...d=10&qpcustomd=0&qpsp=66&qpnp=1&qptimeframe=Q

 

[Wookiee]

I'm also intrigued as to how they get their statistics. I mean, they can only obviously check computers connected to the Internet - which throws the numbers off as there'd be a lot of standalone computers (particularly running XP and lower) not connected to the Internet for various, and obvious, reasons.

Then there'd be a large number of dual-boots that would throw off the statistics, and a number of VMs that would talk to the Internet that would likely have been counted in there (and I daresay that's where a large portion of pre-XP computers come in).

I'm not saying it's enough to make the statistics of the newer versions of Mac and Windows less meaningful, but there would be an awful lot of factors to skew those statistics by a noticeable percentage.