January 2013: Windows 8 is at a 2

Last month we began our particular monitoring of Windows 8 market figures The objective, taking advantage of the synchrony in the months, was compare it with the numbers harvested by its predecessor, Windows 7, after its release in 2009. For this we use the data provided by NetMarketShare. Today it is time to review the growth experienced by both versions of the operating system in the months of January of their respective years. First of all, remember that we are comparing different times, so the numbers must be valued in their context.

The fact is that in January 2013, Windows 8 continues to grow in market share and has already surpassed a good part of the competition.If we add the figures of all versions of Windows 8 collected by NetMarketShare, its current market share is 2.36% The vast majority are desktop versions of the system, with 2.26%, leaving a meager 0.08% for Windows 8 for tablets and a still residual 0.02% for the RT version of the system.

The new system has already outperformed virtually every version of Mac OS X, coming very close to the latest. It is thus only behind previous versions of Windows, which we already identified last month as its true rivals. Windows 7 leads the list with a 44.48% market share. Now, how are you doing against this one in comparative perspective?

As you can see in the graph there are no variations in the rate of growth. Windows 7 in January 2010 had a faster growth and was already in almost 8% of the computers on the planet.Windows 8 continues on a slower trend, similar to past months, and just surpassed 2% market share.

In addition to these figures, it is interesting to note that, after months of growth, Windows 7 slightly decreased its market share in January, from 45.11% to 44.48%. Little by little, the impact of new computers sold that include Windows 8 out of the box should be making itself felt. It is expected that the growth rate of Windows 8 will increase progressively while Windows 7 begins to lose market share. Or maybe not, and we have a new XP in the old version, which still maintains a spectacular 39.51% of the market. Next month we will continue to check it.

More information | NetMarketShare