Vista goes up

The number of Windows Vista users is still growing but Microsoft's share of the overall market remains in a declining trend.

Net Applications report for February 2009 indicates that Vista has gained over the year almost 10 percentage points. Twelve months ago the Vista share was 12.9% and in February 2009 rose to 22.8%. At the same time we can observe a gradually decrease in the popularity of Windows XP (from 74.5% to 63.7%). All Windows systems market share fell from 91.5% to 88.4% within 12 months.

This situation indicates that the decline in popularity of Windows is a result of the competition (especially Mac OS and Linux). Mac OS has gained much more than Linux. Net Applications estimates that, in February this year, Mac OS was used by 9.6% (an increase of 2.1% per year). Linux still failed to break the magic barrier of one percentage point. The number of Linux users has increased over the last year from 0.65% to 0.88%. The Net Applications survey has been prepared on the basis of data from about 160 million computers.