The reality of the current numbers, however, looks a little different to me. To me, it looks like Windows 7 is holding on remarkably well for an OS that's due to officially exit support in only 9 more months, continuing to be the OS of choice on 36.5% of the planets personal computers. That's not 36.5% of Windows PCs, mind, but of PCs overall, a remarkable feat considering that its successor's successor OS was released nearly four years ago, and was free for three and half of those years. To me, the fact that Windows 10 is still only 43.6% of the OS market looks more like a sign foretelling a long, Windows XP-like life for the older OS.
Let's be real, though; "Ten-year-old OS loses market share to four-year-old OS" is basically a dog bites man story. It's expected, and would be dead boring if not for the fact that it's happening a lot more slowly than expected... which is also boring. The more interesting story of the past year has been the movements in the overall OS market.
Overall, Windows spent almost all of last year losing market share to MacOS and Linux, with Apple's offering peaking at 10.65% overall, and Linux peaking at 2.78% overall, while Windows fell to a low of 86.20%. It was looking more and more like consumers had simply had enough of Microsoft, and were looking elsewhere... to the extent of being willing to pay an Apple premium price for an alternative, any alternative, to Windows.
2019 has seen something of a resurgence for Windows, though, with Microsoft's OS rising back to sit comfortably above 87%, while MacOS dropped to a sub-10% level, and Linux retreated to just above 2%. So, you might ask, what new developments came about last month? To which I would answer... nothing, really. Nothing at all.
Windows climbed 0.06% last month, just barely above the ±0.05% relevance threshold. Apple, meanwhile, also climbed by 0.23%, and Chrome climbed by a barely relevant 0.05%. Only Linux lost ground, dropping 0.01%, a number far below the relevance threshold. Last month's big loser was the "Unknown" category, which dropped from 0.41% to 0.09%. Which OSes fall into that category, of course, is not known.
All of that adds up to an end-of-March picture which looks a lot like the end-of-February picture. Essentially, nothing of note happened. After nearly a year of change, it looks like the OS market has more or less stabilized. That's deeply weird, but it seems to be what the numbers are saying. This appears to be our new normal.
We'll have to wait to see whether that holds for the rest of the year, or if we start seeing movement again in the spring and summer months; most of last year's movement happened from May to December, after all, so more movement could still be possible. Watch this space...