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Windows 10 growth stalls during October

Windows XP market share declining less than Win 8.x or 7

If it's the first Monday of the month, then it's time for our monthly look at desktop operating system market share data from StatCounter and Netmarketshare.

This month the news is mixed for the main player, Microsoft, because while Windows 10's market share is growing its rate of growth is slowing.

StatCounter has Redmond's latest effort at bang on nine per cent market share, up from 7.64 per cent in September. That's a nice 1.36 per cent jump, but that's less than Windows 10 scored between August's 5.38 per cent and September's 7.64 per cent.

Netmarketshare has a similar tale to tell with Windows 10 up from 6.63 per cent market share to 7.94 per cent. That's a 1.31 increase over the previous month's market share, but the August-to-September jump was 1.42 per cent.

Little wonder Microsoft is pulling out all the stops to get people to upgrade to Windows 10, by fair means and foul.

StatCounter Windows 7 Windows 8.1 Windows XP OSX Windows 10
July, 2015 54.64 16.84 10 8.6 0.36
August, 2015 53.01 14.37 9.72 8.18 5.38
September, 2015 51.52 13.61 9.38 8.63 7.64
October, 2015 50.26 13.09 9.03 9.02 9

Things aren't all bad for Microsoft: even a one-and-a-bit per cent increase in market share translates to a few tens of millions of new users. With Xbox and Windows Mobile users to come, hundreds of millions more folk will soon run Windows 10.

Netmarketshare.com Windows 7 Windows 8.1 Windows XP OSX Windows 10
July, 2015 60.73 13.11 11.72 4.7 0.39
August, 2015 57.67 11.39 12.14 4.8 5.21
September, 2015 56.53 10.72 12.21 4.9 6.63
October, 2015 55.71 10.68 11.68 3.5 7.94

As the tables above show, all versions of Windows are declining but Windows 10 doesn't appear to have taken a liking to a particular version. It's also worth noting that Windows XP is losing less market share than the other versions of Windows. Folks using that venerable OS to cruise the web, which is how Netmarketshare and StatCounter make their assessments, don't look to have any upgrade plans for the forseeable future. ®

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