Windows 7 Up As Windows XP Slides

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
It looks like Windows XP users are migrating to Windows 7 and Internet Explorer continues to dominate the desktop browser market.

Windows XP's usage share dropped 3.61 points in November. Windows 7 and 8.x both gained 3.19 and 1.85 points, respectively. At this pace, Windows 8.x will pass Windows Vista's highest ever market share—the 19.06 percent it had just before Windows 7 was released in October 2009—next month.
 
Well, we know statcounter is wrong. Google's hit creating prefetch engine has been tripping them up for some time.

W3C is only measuring hits to their own website, also subject to prefetch shenanigans.

Wikimedia, again, a very narrow view from a very select few sites.

almost everything else there is seriously out of date. Net Applications might be the only one that's right.
 
It still confuses me why that 6.55% would stick with Windows 8, when 8.1 is a free upgrade.
 
Well, we know statcounter is wrong. Google's hit creating prefetch engine has been tripping them up for some time.

A bit hyperbolic to go from one public incident, which they has declared resolved as of 2012, to complete lack of trust.

http://gs.statcounter.com/faq#prerendering

W3C is only measuring hits to their own website, also subject to prefetch shenanigans.

From the Wikipedia article, you were referring to:

This site counts the last 15,000 page views from each of approximately 70,000 websites. This limits the influence of sites with more than 15,000 monthly visitors on the usage statistics. W3Counter is not affiliated with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Wikimedia, again, a very narrow view from a very select few sites.

Citation needed on prefetch shenanigans.

Net Applications might be the only one that's right.

Interesting too that Microsoft funnels them money as well.

I work at a company that has one of the most holistic views of the internet, Net Applications is completely wrong, but you don't need to trust me. Go read their methodology and tell me that it doesn't seem bogus.

http://www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#Methodology

They measure total "unique" users. However, they are also using country-level weighting which skews the results by assuming standard distribution across underrepresented samples. That's a statistical fallacy.

Some of the other stats are usage based, and, as a result, are more representative of actual traffic patterns that websites receive rather than reach.

Regardless, W3Counter is also a uniques approach, and it shows a completely different story. Read what you want into it, but Net Applications data isn't a measured statistic, it's inferred using questionable logic funded by the company that benefits from the results.

When all of the data providers (there are more than just those in the wiki article) individually agree except for 1 measurement that differs so substantially, you should really question the validity of the number.

For another source:
http://www.cmo.com/articles/2014/6/2/adi_2014_browser_war.html

Find me an article where Internet Explorer is shown to be the browser leader that isn't using Net Application's stats. Good luck!
 
It still confuses me why that 6.55% would stick with Windows 8, when 8.1 is a free upgrade.

Windows 8.1 is a free upgrade for consumers that requires you to have a Microsoft account and have your machine linked to the Windows app store, and actually notice that there is an update. Many consumers still on Windows 8 may be using local accounts or just don't know there is an update available.

Windows 8.1 is not a free upgrade for businesses. If the business is licensed through software assurance they can upgrade, if they are not there is an licensing fee of around $100 to upgrade from 8 to 8.1 and that is simply not worth it.
 
I have never trusted stat counter, they have had an agenda from the beginning.

Sure Net Applications is supported by Microsoft, they are part of the industry interested in the data.
They are not the only company that shows their support, however. You left off:
Apple, VeriSign, Accenture, Adobe, Sony, Yahoo, Blackberry, Forbes, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Mozilla, Opera, and a few others.

That's quite a backing of trust there.

Further, Ars Technica trusts the data, and I trust Ars. That's generally good enough for me.

What I am getting out of you is a lot of buthurt that the data doesn't say what you want it to. :)
 
It still confuses me why that 6.55% would stick with Windows 8, when 8.1 is a free upgrade.

Windows 8.1 is a free upgrade for consumers that requires you to have a Microsoft account and have your machine linked to the Windows app store, and actually notice that there is an update. Many consumers still on Windows 8 may be using local accounts or just don't know there is an update available.

Just to further expand on this, I have one system each in my house, 8 and 8.1. Since the 8.1 system is only used by one person, user switching isn't a problem. But the Win8 system is used by three people (minimum), and was set up using a basic admit account and three local non-admin accounts. If I try to upgrade to 8.1, each of those local accounts have to be made into MS accounts or any MS store apps installed stop working, etc. Not worth the hassle, and I shouldn't have to set up a MS account for my 10 year old daughter to play Minecraft and research homework!
 
There are a LOT of aggressively priced and very good Windows 8.1 machines in the market now in part due to Microsoft giving away Windows on these cheaper devices to compete with Chromebooks and Android tablets. And unlike previous attempts at cheap Windows devices like the netbooks of just a few years ago, there are many very good devices being sold here. When Windows 8 came out two years ago, these quality low price devices didn't exist. Intel hadn't gotten Bay Trail out, Microsoft was still charging for Windows on devices that just could support the pricing levels and OEMs just weren't making good enough devices at the right prices in large part because of the first two issues.

It's a much different market for Windows hardware now and after two years of Windows and the refinements that were bought in 8.1 and 8.1 Update, its tough to argue that Windows 8.1 is complete crap, especially as consumers can now buy fully capable desktop machines for less than Chromebooks now. While it could be argued that having to give away Windows 8.1 is a sign of failure, it's tough to see how Microsoft would ever be able to sell licenses for devices that are not hitting below $100 dollars running full Windows.
 
I have never trusted stat counter, they have had an agenda from the beginning.

Sure Net Applications is supported by Microsoft, they are part of the industry interested in the data.
They are not the only company that shows their support, however. You left off:
Apple, VeriSign, Accenture, Adobe, Sony, Yahoo, Blackberry, Forbes, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Mozilla, Opera, and a few others.

That's quite a backing of trust there.

Further, Ars Technica trusts the data, and I trust Ars. That's generally good enough for me.

What I am getting out of you is a lot of buthurt that the data doesn't say what you want it to. :)

You got me! Logic has subsided, it's personal attack and misplaced trust time!
 
Some who are running 8 *can't* upgrade to 8.1 due to the 3 necessary instructions 8.1 x64 requires but may not be supported by the proc/mobo.

But even then it's hard to figure out how Windows 8 is seeing any growth as it's not been on new devices in a year. Unless there's people that have been holding on to copies of it and just getting around to installing them.
 
But even then it's hard to figure out how Windows 8 is seeing any growth as it's not been on new devices in a year. Unless there's people that have been holding on to copies of it and just getting around to installing them.

That's easy to explain. The way they collect data is broken and unreliable so it's impossible to draw any useful conclusions from it.
 
If I bought a brand new PC today, I would definitely upgrade it to Windows 7. The increasing market share split makes sense from that angle, particularly when over 3/4 of new PCs sold are going into businesses.
 
Lots of computers sit in channels for a long time. Heck you can still find Vista machines here and there. On top of that there is probably some amount of people who upgrade to 8.1 then for one reason or another get a replacement machine reformat from recovery partition etc.... And they end up back on window 8. The reality is MS has long needed to force consumers to upgrade. I think that MS should make the ability to reject upgrades a feature you have to go turn on buried in the control panel somewhere so that we don't have all these people who just don't upgrade rather than making you have to actively allow the update.

Also the unreliable data is another problem. I don't think anyone can accurately explain why safari can hold nearly 40% of mobile when android has been outselling them hand over fist for years. There was never any year where apple sold more than 20% of phones yet they constantly hold over double that % in market share according to net applications. People try to explain it in all sorts of weird ways but ultimately the only one that makes sense is they are cheating this method somehow. And the even more ironic part is how people love to accuse android of prefetching. They sell like 85% of smart phones and they have nearly half that in market share and people accuse them of cheating the stats?
 
Also the unreliable data is another problem. I don't think anyone can accurately explain why safari can hold nearly 40% of mobile when android has been outselling them hand over fist for years. There was never any year where apple sold more than 20% of phones yet they constantly hold over double that % in market share according to net applications. People try to explain it in all sorts of weird ways but ultimately the only one that makes sense is they are cheating this method somehow. And the even more ironic part is how people love to accuse android of prefetching. They sell like 85% of smart phones and they have nearly half that in market share and people accuse them of cheating the stats?

A lot of Android phones are just given away these days by carriers to people that will never use them as true smartphones. This just isn't the case with the iPhone.
 
Back
Top