Last week the bean counters over at StatCounter and NetMarketShare updated their stats and charts with data they had captured from the whole of July. Windows 10 is of course enjoying share growth, and it is predicted to unseat Windows 7 on both StatCounter and NetMarketShare by the end of the year.
If you look at StatCounter you can see Windows 10 has solidified its position, up about half a per cent over the previous month while Windows 7 usage has dropped about the same amount. The current state of play is said to be: 47.25 per cent for Windows 10, 39.06 per cent for Windows 7. HEXUS reported in February that Windows 10 enjoyed supplanting Windows 7 as the most popular version of Windows in January 2018, according to StatCounter.
Considering NetMarket's desktop OS data (which includes Windows versions plus Linux and Mac) you can clearly see that Windows 10 is closing in on Windows 7 usage. Over the most recently recorded period, Windows 10 has gained nearly one per cent over the previous month while Windows 7 usage has dropped about half a per cent.
The way these respective organisations collect data means that their stats show different results, however the trends do usually agree. To refresh those that may have forgotten, in a nutshell StatCounter data is collected via sites and blogs using its popular plugin (2m+ sites globally). NetMarketShare uses a different methodology, and tallies approx "100 million valid sessions per month". Partly due to the various regions where the StatCounter plugin is more popular and the way it gives extra weight to heavy web users - it boosts Windows 10 stats in comparison to Windows 7.
Back to ComputerWorld's prediction that Windows 10 will "supplant Windows 7 as the most popular flavour of Windows by the end of the year," the magazine thinks this milestone will be reached in November. Furthermore, it reckons that by January 2019, a mere 12 months before it loses official security and technical support, Windows 7 will have 43 per cent of the Windows market share, and Windows 10 will by then be well ahead with over 47 per cent of the Windows market share.
