At the end of 2007 one thing is clear... Windows Vista is far from the Wow revelation that Microsoft aimed for with the late January worldwide consumer launch. With Windows XP having dug in its roots from 2001 until early 2007, and owning the lion's share of the operating system market (more than 85%), Vista enjoyed, as well as the alternative operating systems such as Mac OS X and Linux, little elbow room. Still, while Mac OS X and Linux are growing on a niche eroding small portions from under XP, Vista had to go head to head against its predecessor. And in this context, what initially appeared as a case of natural evolution from XP to Vista proved to be a complex ballet that saw the latest Windows client grow its foothold on the operating system market at a steady but slow pace. This situation generated criticism that simply added to the mixed reviews associated with Vista, downplaying the last Windows iteration. And even if
Microsoft constantly labored to focus users on Vista, XP did manage to steal a part of the show.
With one month to go until the first year anniversary since Vista hit the shelves, XP is still a long way from falling to the 2nd position on the operating system market. According to data from Net Applications, at the beginning of December 2007, Vista was at 9.19% of the market. In just 10 months Vista has gone from 0.18% to over 9%, moving past Mac OS X and Linux. The percentage reflects Microsoft claims from October that there were approximately 90 million licenses of the operating system shipped into the channel. Microsoft failed to provide additional details about Vista's performance in terms of adoption since October, but with the holiday shopping frenzy, the platform is bound to go past the 100 million sold copies worldwide, even if the Redmond company will count all the licenses pushed to its channel partners as well.
Mac OS X, without a competitor for Vista, as Leopard dropped at the end of October, increased its market share by piggyback ridding on Apple Mac computers. At the end of November, the Cupertino-based company accounted for no less than 6.80% of the operating system market. The open source Linux operating system also had a good evolution in 2007. The various Linux distributions have almost doubled the platform's market share taking it up almost to 0.6%. Linux might be still stuck in the position of the indisputable underdog in comparison to its rivals, but with increasing support from OEMs such as Dell, at least the main distros, including Red Hat, SUSE from Novell and Ubuntu from Canonical, have the potential of going mainstream.
Of course, the statistics painting the overall picture of the operating system market are varying in accordance with the different mechanisms applied by metrics companies. Data made available by W3Counter puts Windows XP at 80.62% of the market, compared with Net Applications' 78.37%, and Vista at just 4.74%, at the end of November. Mac OS X is at 4.56% while Linux is credited with 1.77%.
Still, reading between the lines, the overall situation is the same with XP in the lead, Vista as runner up and Mac OS X and Linux trailing behind. 2008 will only accentuate the gap between Vista and its followers as SP1 will be released in the first quarter, while at the same time, closing the distance that separates it from XP.
Source: Softpedia
Microsoft constantly labored to focus users on Vista, XP did manage to steal a part of the show.
With one month to go until the first year anniversary since Vista hit the shelves, XP is still a long way from falling to the 2nd position on the operating system market. According to data from Net Applications, at the beginning of December 2007, Vista was at 9.19% of the market. In just 10 months Vista has gone from 0.18% to over 9%, moving past Mac OS X and Linux. The percentage reflects Microsoft claims from October that there were approximately 90 million licenses of the operating system shipped into the channel. Microsoft failed to provide additional details about Vista's performance in terms of adoption since October, but with the holiday shopping frenzy, the platform is bound to go past the 100 million sold copies worldwide, even if the Redmond company will count all the licenses pushed to its channel partners as well.
Mac OS X, without a competitor for Vista, as Leopard dropped at the end of October, increased its market share by piggyback ridding on Apple Mac computers. At the end of November, the Cupertino-based company accounted for no less than 6.80% of the operating system market. The open source Linux operating system also had a good evolution in 2007. The various Linux distributions have almost doubled the platform's market share taking it up almost to 0.6%. Linux might be still stuck in the position of the indisputable underdog in comparison to its rivals, but with increasing support from OEMs such as Dell, at least the main distros, including Red Hat, SUSE from Novell and Ubuntu from Canonical, have the potential of going mainstream.
Of course, the statistics painting the overall picture of the operating system market are varying in accordance with the different mechanisms applied by metrics companies. Data made available by W3Counter puts Windows XP at 80.62% of the market, compared with Net Applications' 78.37%, and Vista at just 4.74%, at the end of November. Mac OS X is at 4.56% while Linux is credited with 1.77%.
Still, reading between the lines, the overall situation is the same with XP in the lead, Vista as runner up and Mac OS X and Linux trailing behind. 2008 will only accentuate the gap between Vista and its followers as SP1 will be released in the first quarter, while at the same time, closing the distance that separates it from XP.
Source: Softpedia
