The part that Microsoft's apologists will almost certainly latch onto is the pronounced dip in the graph's top trend line. That's Windows 7, losing 2.81% and dropping to 45.62% overall. That is a clear drop, and it marks Windows 7's lowest point in two years, but where things get interesting is with the next trend line down. That's Windows 10, which also lost 2.48%, dropping it to 25.51% overall, Windows 10's lowest point since January (XP and 8.1 also lost share, although neither have much farther to fall, so their declines are below my ±0.5% noise threshold).
So, if both of Windows' most popular versions are losing market share, who's gaining?
MacOS managed a small uptick, gaining 0.52% to hit 4.11% overall, but the big mover is "Other," which picked up 5.20% to land at 13.04% overall. "Other," of course, means "Linux," so that puts Linux's various distros' combined share of the market into double digit territory for the first time ever. Windows 10's share of Windows PCs did increase a bit (to 31.03%, from 28.81%), but Windows 7's share of the Windows-PC market also increased (to 55.49%, from 54.68%), so even excluding Linux from the picture doesn't help Microsoft much.
The news here for Windows is all bad.
It's literally a replay of last month, with Windows' overall share of the market dropping and Linux making big gains. This month's drop is worse, though; last month's (initially posted) stats had Windows holding onto 86.30% of the OS market, but this month they're well below that, at 82.21%. Linux's gains are bigger, too; last month's initially posted numbers showed them gaining only 4.60%, well short of this month's 5.20%.
Last month, Netmarketshare was clearly as surprised by their own reported numbers as I was, and quickly gave them some sort of regression analysis massage before "updating" them with numbers that hewed closer to expectations. But their reported statistics are showing big losses for Windows, and big gains for Linux, for a second straight month now, and I'm starting to think that this isn't some sort of statistical anomaly. We'll probably want one more data point that reinforces this trend before accepting it as a trend, but Netmarketshare don't seem to be in any hurry to replace this month's numbers with "corrected" versions.
What's more, we've already been getting signals from Microsoft that would seem to support the idea that Windows is seeing an overall decline in market share, as reported by MSPowerUser just yesterday:
Besides restating his common refrain regarding Microsoft and phones, Nadella also stated that there was now 1 billion Windows users. The number is interesting from the mouth of the CEO of Microsoft, who would of course have a pulse on this important stat. It is down from the commonly assumed number of 1.5 billion PC users (stated by Microsoft themselves in 2014), and from a number previously quoted by Microsoft in 2011 of 1.25 billion users.
It suggests rather than simply being static the number of PC users are actually rapidly shrinking, which may explain why the growth of Windows 10 users has stalled at around 400-500 billion despite around 260 million PCs being sold in 2016.At this point, though, it looks like Nadella doesn't so much have his finger on the pulse of the broader PC market, but rather is watching the Windows PC market, which looks like it is, indeed, shrinking. As I wrote yesterday, when Microsoft's CEO is spinning the state of his own company's flagship product by telling you that it's not the most important thing they make anymore, you know the situation has to be pretty dire. I think Windows' decline here is very real; I think that Microsoft are also seeing this trend in their internal statistics; and I don't think that they have the first clue how they'll go about reversing this trend.
Windows is Microsoft's flagship product; it's the single most widely used product that they make, and has been utterly dominant in desktop computing for decades. But when things start to fall apart, they really fall apart, and dissatisfaction with Microsoft's heavy-handed, anti-consumer tactics has been evident for some time now. This month's market share numbers seem to be showing us the start of an actual paradigm shift in desktop computing... which is ironic, given that Microsoft have been trying desperately to make a paradigm shift happen in PC computing, ever since Windows 10 launched.
Nadella's crew have spent the better part of two years trying to convince us to let go of pre-10 Windows; to embrace UWP, the Microsoft store, and the need to buy all of our software again (though them, natch, with Microsoft taking a tidy cut of that action). Consumers had been resistant to the idea until now, but it looks like people are finally warming to the idea of a fresh start; the problem for Microsoft is that fresh start doesn't necessarily mean Windows and the Microsoft Store. Microsoft have also invested heavily in adding Linux to Windows 10, so they won't be left out entirely as Linux surges in popularity, but I doubt that this was the outcome Microsoft had in mind when they started that project.
Has the year of Linux on the desktop finally arrived? Have Microsoft overplayed their monopolistic hand, and ushered out the age of Windows desktop dominance in the process? Where are all these new Linux users coming from? I somehow doubt that these are all individual users, suddenly flocking to Linux after sticking with Windows for so long; my bet would be on businesses switching to Linux, rather than dealing with Microsoft's constantly-changing terms and inconsistent approach to updates (Windows-As-A-Service is still not a thing, no matter how much Microsoft want you to think it is). But businesses hadn't shown any particular appetite for Linux before now, either, so... why now?
I guess that's the big question here. Not so much why? because we can all think of any number of reasons why someone might be sufficiently fed up with Microsoft's bullshit to be looking for alternatives. The question isn't, Why Linux? The question is only, Why now?
Stay tuned, dear reader! These are interesting times, and I expect the answer to that question will be every bit as interesting as the Linux Shift itself.