The good news for Microsoft? Windows 10 has regained 0.17% of its lost market share, climbing all the way to 25.36%. Yay! Windows 7, on the other hand, gained only 1.01%, eking out only 49.42% of the current OS market. Wait, what?
Yes, Windows 10 has again gained basically nothing! Remember, movements of less than ±0.5% are just noise, especially if the number keeps fluctuating up and down by less than half a percent from month to month. Windows 7, by comparison, has gained more than a percent for the second straight month, and January's dip is starting to look like the blip for Microsoft's eight year old OS.
This was the end of February:
This was the end of March:
And this is the trend for the last 6 months:
Yep... those are some flat trendlines.
At this point, it's important to put this data in its proper context... specifically, a context in which Microsoft is still pushing Windows 10 and its monetization strategy way too hard. Remember, March was a month in which Microsoft started denying security updates to people who tried to run Windows 7 on newer hardware; reneged on their promise not to auto-download updates "in the background" metered connections; and added ads to File Explorer, in addition to the lock screen and start menu ads they were already running. Oh, and did I mention that March was also the month when people discovered that Microsoft had built a keylogger into Windows 10, turned it on by default, and failed to mention this to users?
After so much shit, I was predicting that Windows 10 would lose market share to Windows 7. That didn't quite happen, but Windows 7 still gained, and Windows 10 didn't, which I'd call a close enough result, considering that only one of the two is currently available for purchase. With most businesses not planning to adopt Windows 10 for 3 - 4 years, it doesn't look like Microsoft's ham-fisted tactics are winning over new Windows 10 converts anytime soon, either, which spells trouble for them when their corporate strategy clearly requires them to move significant numbers of users from 7 to 10 almost immediately. GG, Microsoft. GG.
Next up: The new Steam Survey numbers. It'll be interesting to see if PC gamers continue to switch back to Windows 7, even as the Creators Update (with its included Game Mode) makes its way to Windows 10.
UPDATE:
Betanews is next out of the gate on this one, with a very similar take.
Another take comes from Computing:
Despite the hype surrounding the 11 April release of the Creators Update for Microsoft Windows 10, the market share figures for March suggest that PC users are resolutely sticking to Windows 7, rather than upgrade.
According to Net Applications' NetMarketShare service, usage of Windows 7 continues to edge up, and the legacy Microsoft operating system remains twice as popular as Windows 10.
Windows 7, which has already seen off Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, has taken a one percentage point jump to 49.42 per cent (+1.01), putting it at its highest showing since June 2016, when Microsoft's one-year free offer for Windows 10 stopped.
After the high-water-mark established by the launch of Windows 95, when people even queued up at midnight at computer stores to get hold of a copy, Microsoft's stock has slowly declined.
These days, it seems that if the company makes an operating system that no one likes, no one buys it: Windows Vista, which goes end-of-life on 23 April, is now down to just 0.72 per cent (-0.06) in the NetMarketShare figures. But if they make one that's too good, then much of the market actively avoids upgrading.
Of course, some of the tactics deployed by Microsoft, such as discontinuing support for Windows 7 on the latest chips and chipsets will no doubt have a longer term impact, but possibly at the cost of goodwill.
I'm not sure what they mean by, "if they make one that's too good, then much of the market
actively avoids upgrading" -- from where I sit, much of the market seems to be actively avoiding upgrading because Windows 10 is loaded with anti-consumer shit that nobody wants. When it comes to "the cost of goodwill," though, I think they're right on the money.
Computerworld has this take on the same stats:
While there's little doubt that Windows 10 will eventually supplant Windows 7 as the most widely-used desktop system -- just as Windows 7 replaced Windows XP -- there are conditions that may delay Windows 7's decline, perhaps even leave it with a larger share of PCs than did XP when Microsoft pulled its support three years ago.
At the same point in its pre-retirement lifespan -- slightly less than three years to go -- Windows XP had shed 9 percentage points of user share in the preceding 12 months, or three times more than did Windows 7. Admittedly, XP started with a larger share -- 58% of all PCs, 62% of Windows machines -- at the 33-months-to-go mark, but the rate of the decline (nearly 15%) was also about three times that of Windows 7's sluggish downturn.
Today's desktop climate, however, is very different than in early 2011, when Windows XP had less than three years of support coming. PC shipments in 2010, for instance, were approximately 350 million, according to research firm IDC. The number of shipments last year: 260 million.
Most industry analysts have pinned responsibility of the shipment slide on consumers, who have dispensed with PCs, or added years to the interval between new PC purchases or decided that their current machine will be their last ever.
That third possibility could prop up Windows 7's user share longer than under pre-slump circumstances. Consumers who have a working Windows 7 PC and plan to use that system until it dies, forgoing any replacement, then drop the form factor entirely, won't bother upgrading the OS. They will continue to run Windows 7, even as they power up the PC less and less often.The one group of users that are still switching to Windows 10? Gamers, of course. From WinBuzzer:
A new survey has found that Microsoft’s Windows 10 is once again moving in the right direction on Steam. In recent months, the platform’s user base on the service has declined. Now Windows 10 has increased its share again, up to an all-time high of 51.2%.
The figure comes from a Steam hardware survey conducted by the platform’s owner, Valve. Back in December we reported that Windows 10’s share on the game streaming service. Earlier this year, that share topped the 50% mark for the first time.
Since then, Windows 10 share slipped back down to 48.77% in February. It could be argued that the actual percentage figure is not important when the swing is only a few percentage points. Also, Windows 10 is comfortably the most used platform on Steam, whether it has 51% or 48%.I had hoped that even PC gamers were fed up with Microsoft's shit, but apparently the average gamers' tolerance for corporate bullshit is significantly higher than that of the OS market overall. At least we now know how Windows 10 managed to eke out the meagre gain that it saw in March; it remains to be seen whether gamers continue to embrace the new platform, at least in large enough numbers to keep Windows 10 on any sort of overall upward trajectory.