Windows 7 has taken 10% of the global market almost a year faster than its much-berated predecessor, according to figures from Net Applications.
It has taken Windows 7 just five months to hit the 10% milestone, whereas Vista didn’t pass that target until May 2008, 16 months after its first appearance.
However, the growth of Windows 7 came at the expense of Windows XP, which dropped from 70.5% of the market in October to 64.5% in March. Over the same period, Vista’s market share fell from 18.8% to 16% – leaving Windows 7 on a trajectory to overtake it this summer.
The cannibalisation of XP’s market share means Microsoft’s overall share of the operating system market fell half a percentage point to a 91.6%.
It was also a good month for Google’s Chrome, which now holds 6.1% of the browser market, ahead of Safari which sits on a 4.7% share.
The browser has been growing rapidly in in the past six months, picking up 2.55% of market share, compared to 0.45% for Firefox, Safari’s 0.23% and Opera’s 0.20%. In contrast, Internet Explorer has lost 3.99% – a situation which could be exacerbated by the browser ballot, currently being rolled out to European users.
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