Windows 7 officially became the most popular operating system in the world, according to figures revealed by Net Applications and concerning the August 2012 operating system market share.
Windows XP has been around for some time now and it remained the number one operating system a long period of time when it comes to the overall market share. Windows Vista, on the other hand, is only the third OS, followed by iPad and iPhones (both using iOS) and Mac OS X.
To be more specific, Windows 7 had a market share of 38.54 percent in August, while Windows XP dropped to 38.46 percent. The difference between these two and the third position is huge, as Windows Vista barely snatched 5.47 points.
Windows 8, the upcoming operating system that will be officially released next month, had a market share of 0.21 percent, but that's not at all a problem given the fact that Microsoft only rolled out test versions of the software. The feedback however is mostly positive and the Redmond-based firm expects figures to grow before eventually pushing Windows 8 to the leading position.
Windows 2000, on the other hand, lost most of its users and had only 0.06 points in August, less than Symbian (0.14 percent) and even Blackberry (0.18 percent).
Windows XP constantly lost ground since the launch of Windows 7 and that pretty much makes sense given the feature package brought by the new operating system. For example, XP had a market share of 48.03 percent in October 2011, while in the first month of this year it dropped to 47.19 percent. Vista is clearly a disappointing product, as it started the year with 8.22 points before dropping to 5.47 percent last month.
