Tag Archives: Market Share

Third of Desktops Still On Windows XP



Microsoft Windows LogoThe team at Net Market Share have released their statistics for November and shockingly, over 30% of desktop Internet users are still using Windows XP. The 12-year old OS will lose all support from Microsoft in four month’s time, after which XP machines will not receive any further security updates and will become vulnerable to newly discovered exploits. XP’s market share is dropping, albeit slowly, with about 8% loss in the last year, but it’s clear that there is still going to be a large XP presence on the Internet come April 2014.

Windows 7 desktops make up the bulk of browsers with over 46% and the total for Windows 8.x clocks in at a little under 10%. Windows 8.1 only accounted for 2.6% which isn’t entirely unsurprising given that it was only released in mid-October. Here’s the top 5 desktop OS, courtesy of Net Market Share.

  1. Windows 7: 46.64%
  2. Windows XP: 31.22%
  3. Windows 8: 6.66%
  4. Windows Vista: 3.57%
  5. Windows 8.1: 2.64%

On the tablet and smartphone front, iOS and Android are pretty much the only shows in town, with 55% and 34% respectively. All the other OSes scored less then 5%, with Symbian still showing 3%. Windows Phone is at 0.67% but it is up from 0.50% in October. Blackberry continues to fall, down to 1.65% from 2.55% the previous month.

Here’s the top 5 mobile OS.

  1. iOS: 55.17%
  2. Android: 33.89%
  3. Java ME: 4.49%
  4. Symbian: 3.12%
  5. BlackBerry: 1.65%

If I read the accompanying information, these figures are gathered from approx 160 million visitors per month from Net Market Share’s network of clients and customers so it should be a fair reflection of the real world. There’s more detail here.


Adobe claims tablet traffic has passed smartphones and UK leads the way



Perhaps we knew this day would come, but certainly not this soon. However, Adobe today released some statistics that claim that the day has come — “Our latest Adobe Dig­i­tal Index has revealed that global web­sites are now receiving more traf­fic from tablets than smart­phones, with 8% and 7% of monthly page views respectably”.

adobe tablet study

In conducting the study, Adobe analyzed more than 100 bil­lion vis­its to 1000+ web­sites world-wide to generate the data that was used to compile this report. Not only did the company find that tablets have surpassed smartphones, but that the country leading the way was the U.K. Adobe claims it “found that the UK is leading this trend, with internet users most likely to surf via tablet”.

For the record, the U.K. came is with 12.2 percent and was followed by Japan at 9.2 percent. The land of the rising sun was just ahead of the U.S. with 9.1 percent of the tablet traffic.

Adobe’s study also found that tablet traffic across nations doubled in 2012 — “tablet traffic growth has been con­sis­tent through 2012. All countries saw their share of traffic from tablets double over the course of last year and that trend is expected to continue through 2013”.

It is becoming increasingly harder to distinguish between tablets and smartphones, as the market seems to be headed towards the “phablet”. Perhaps devices like the Galazy Note 2, with its 5.5-inch screen are more the future than anything else.


Bing Gains Market Share, Yahoo Loses Again



The latest search market share numbers have been released and two trends have continued – Bing is up and Yahoo is down.  The numbers have been posted by both Compete and ComScore and the trends shown by both are very similar.  Unfortunately for Microsoft, while Bing is gaining share on Yahoo, they are not getting anywhere in their battle against Google, who continue to be the 600 pound gorilla in the room.

Google, while maintaining their strangle-hold, has not seen an increase since late 2011, but that changed between March and April when their market share increased from 65.5% to 65.9% according to Compete rankings.  Meanwhile, ComScore showed a slight Google decrease from 66.4% to 65.5%.

According to Compete Bing increased their share from 18.0% to 18.3% and Yahoo dropped from 15.7% to 15.0%.  ComScore listed the changes as Yahoo being down from 13.7% to 13.5% and Bing with a slight increase from 15.3% to 15.4%.

While the slight increases for Bing sound promising it seems that most of the gain come at the expense of Yahoo and not Google.  That isn’t so good since Bing now powers Yahoo search.  Bing has recently released a series of updates that add better search results, functionality, and interface which could lead to another increase when the May numbers are released.  You can check out both share rankings posted below.

April-Search-Market-Share-Report

comscore april 12


Browser Market Share Shocker



It’s been a while since I paid attention to web traffic, specifically browser numbers.  So, what I saw today was a bit of a shock.

It seems things have been changing recently, on just about every front.

For a start, I thought Firefox was gaining share.  I seem to think I heard that in several places.  I also thought Explorer was losing, Chrome was on the rise, and Safari and Opera didn’t much play in this game.

But today, August 1, 2010, NetMarketShare released their July numbers for the browser battle.  And it seems that, not since Explorer vs Netscape, has there been this much of a battle.

For starters, IE has gained share for the second straight month – 59.75% > 60.32% > 60.74%.  Needless to say, Microsoft is touting this all they can.

The next shocker was that Firefox has LOST share – for the third straight month.  They have dropped from 24.59% to 22.91% since April, 2010.  Since I have a techie website, and see mostly Firefox and Chrome in my stats, I may be a little jaded here, but I honestly thought Firefox and Chrome were the big winners recently.

Chrome, it turns out, has also dropped some, though.  Not much, but 7.24% to 7.16% is a drop, none-the-less.  Especially since they have been on a steady upward trajectory since launch.  In fact, this their first drop ever.

Safari has been on a steady rise for the past few months, going from 4.24% in September 2009 to 5.09% in July 2010.  This was another shocker, since I had no idea anyone running Windows was using Safari.  But, Safari’s market share outpaces Apple’s OS which hangs in at 5.06% versus Windows’ 91.32%.  Is this making sense to anyone?

Finally, Opera, also has risen.  They remain far behind, but they rise little by little.  Again, it seems to be at the expense of Firefox and Chrome.  For July they topped out at 2.45% over June’s 2.27%.

As I mentioned, I run a techie site, much like this one, so my view is skewed.  But, most of my users are on Firefox and Chrome and I have seen no real drop in the numbers.  But, it looks like the masses are going with the defaults – IE and Safari.  With more people coming online all of the time this is a trend that could, against all odds, continue.  The third-world may rule our future after all.