Market research and analysis firm Net Applications recently shared its figures for July 2019. The particular metric worth highlighting this month charts the dynamic between Windows 7 and Windows 10. In July the firm noted a significant fall in the share of Windows 7 computers, with a drop of 3.6 per cent being the second largest monthly decline ever for the ageing OS. Thus Windows 7 ended July with 31.8 per cent of the OS market share, compared to 48.9 per cent for Windows 10.
Here is a link to Net MarketShare's page dedicated to charting OS trends. A year ago you can see that Windows 7 was dominant, with 41.2 per cent of the market, vs 36.6 per cent for Windows 10. The 7 vs 10 crossover occurred between Nov and Dec 2018, according to Net Applications, and there has been a bit of a tussle between the OSes since that time. July, however, appears to show the Windows 7 bough break, with an acceleration of users shifting over to Microsoft's newest OS. The latest state of play is Windows 7 with 31.8 per cent of user share vs 48.9 per cent for Windows 10. That represents a monthly increase of 3.1 per cent for Windows 10.
The underlying reason for the acceleration of change is likely to be the looming end of support for Windows 7. The specific end of support day for Windows 7 will be 14th January, 2020. "After that, technical assistance and software updates from Windows Update that help protect your PC will no longer be available for the product," says Microsoft. Of course Microsoft is recommending users switch soon, so your computer can continue to receive the latest security updates, and more.
According to ComputerWorld's calculations, the Windows 7 market share will still be over 30 per cent as the OS passes the end-of-support date. That is an improvement on prior projections but still a lot of PCs connected to the internet without vendor support and patches coming for bugs, issues, and vulnerabilities. Nevertheless, the 30 per cent figure is very similar to that observed when Windows XP crossed the River Styx to the land of no support five years ago.
