I'd been confidently predicting that not much of anything would change for the end of August, in much the same way that nothing changed at the end of July, or June, or May, and so on, but it looks like Microsoft may have finally convinced Windows 7 users to switch operating systems. NetMarketShare have put up their end-of-August numbers OS usage statistics, and Windows 7's share of the market has contracted by 1.90%, which is considerably more than the ±0.5% "noise threshold" (my guess at NetMarketShare's error bars).
I doubt that Microsoft will be celebrating, though, because Windows 7's loss did not turn into a gain for Windows 10 -- Microsoft's current flagship product declined, too, by 3.83%, giving back months of gains. Windows 8.1 dropped, too, by 0.65% (again, over the ±0.5% threshold). In fact, the only version of Windows that gained in usage share appears to be Windows XP, which only ticked up by a negligible 0.67%, basically offsetting Windows 8.1's losses.
What does it all add up to? Well, it adds up to an overall 5.15% loss of market share for Windows. Yes, you're reading that correctly: after sitting comfortably at about a 91.5% share of the market for months, Windows overall share of the market has just dropped to 86.3%.
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So, who was August's big winner in the market share race? Surprise! It's Linux, with an overall gain of 4.60%. MacOS ticked up, too, by 0.54% overall, which is more than ±0.5%, but not a big enough swing to be the source of Windows' woes.
Now, the usual caveats apply; this is a big swing, but it is the first time that we've seen this swing in the market share numbers, and it's definitely going against the grain of a six-month trend, so nobody in Redmond should panic just yet. Once could be an accident, some freak occurrence in NetMarketShare's sampling that produced an anomalous result. We'll need to see these numbers repeat for the end of September and October before we can confidently say that this is the new normal. But the fact that it happened at all is jaw-dropping.
I'd been saying for the better part of two years that Microsoft's bad behaviour should not be rewarded with success; that the just and fair result of their anti-consumer, monopolistic disregard for the clearly stated wishes of their customers should be a shift away from Windows, broadly, and towards Linux, a perfectly cromulent OS that didn't include any of that baggage. I'd long since given up any hope of seeing it happen, though; Windows was so solidly the choice of over 91% of the market, and had been for so long, that I didn't think that would ever change. It was the bedrock assumption for every other prediction that everybody was making.
Bedrock is only solid until it isn't, though, and plate tectonics may finally be catching up with Microsoft. If the market really is abandoning their not only their older OS versions, but also Windows 10, and for Linux, then Microsoft's cavalier disregard for the trust and goodwill of Windows customers may be about to cost them more than anyone thought was possible. We don't yet know if this is the new normal, but if it is, then this shifts the ground out from under Microsoft in a way that would only a disaster for the Redmond firm.
That last point really can't be overstated. Everything that Microsoft has done for over two years has been predicated on the assumption that their dominant position on the desktop could be leveraged into positions in other tech sectors. Consumers were taking a long time to warm up to that Windows 10 vision of the future, but if it turns out that consumers are actively rejecting it, instead, then Microsoft will have to go back to the drawing board... but with every part of their hand weakened by their miscalculations with Windows 10, and years of costly development basically revealed as worthless. The failure of UWP may be the very least of their problems.