Windows Market Share Drops to 57% in the US

https://www.technobugg.com/windows-losing-market-share-in-the-united-states/

by carlycue • 3 years ago

36 73 3 years ago

dzonga• 3 years ago

no shit, sherlock. keep shipping a user hostile OS ? and you think people are gonna stay.

in as much the javascript ecosystem is a pita. it freed a lot of software - and made it be accessible on all platforms either via the browser or electron.

now what someone needed a windows machine for can be done on an ipad, linux box, chrome book etc.

the next evolution of course will be the transition of professional software to run on web-assembly, then people can finally be free of microsoft's tyranny.

hackerlight• 3 years ago

For me it has nothing to do with OS. It's the hardware quality of Apple, and the OS comes along for the ride.

rektide• 3 years ago

There are really nice Windows machines but Holy shit, there is zero legit reason to pay Apple grade prices for a laptop, especially a Windows laptop. (Unless you are a company & then price is a rounding error on expenses anyways.) Especially since no one is sure how good the Win laptop really is.

The market segmentation is ridiculous. So many deliberately shitty builds and subpar screens that cost $25 less than a good screen, on mid range laptops. Awful web cams everywhere. The PC market is killing itself, by trying too hard to extract an upsell, rather than making smart compromises that try to deliver good value. Frigging unbelievably sad.

Actually I take back my starting place! Apple now has great very capable well built $1k laptops. That's borderline perfectly fine for a very solid low-compromise machine imo. Disruption from above coming down (so damned rare in today's world!). I was more thinking MBP prices but you just don't need it now.

zwieback2• 3 years ago

Especially nowadays where OS and app experience has been largely replaced with browser and webapp experience.

version_five• 3 years ago

  the next evolution of course will be the transition of professional software to run on web-assembly, then people can finally be free of microsoft's tyranny.

If you're running some closed source code from a SaaS application in wasm, you're not free of anybody's tyranny.

The advantage of Microsoft is actually a widely compatible ecosystem. There might be vendor lock-in, but it was always collective vendor lock in, so at least it was easy to exchange stuff. If everyone is using some different incompatible SaaS, we're going to experience all the downside and non of the upside.

7thaccount2• 3 years ago

I'll shortly be switching jobs and one of the things I look forward to most is getting a Mac so I can finally use a real terminal and something that isn't so buggy. I'll still run some Windows programs in a VM I guess, but it won't have to be my main experience. I'm also excited about a usable and easy to learn systems language that can compile to a binary (swift).

zamadatix8• 3 years ago

I made the switch to macOS with my last job change for the first time because of the M1 and I'll give two notes from my experience: the terminal is still very awkward compared to a proper Linux environment + will still need a bunch of tweaking and Crossover tends to run the random Windows app better/more conveniently than Parallels (which has been the best VM experience on Apple silicon so far).

Overall it's great but don't go into thinking it's terminal focused or bug free just because it's not Windows and has a *nix background. It's more like trading one set of weird decisions for another, albeit with less attempts to gather your data or sell you things (but not 0 attempts). The hardware lives up fully to the hype though.

goosedragons• 3 years ago

Unfortunately most of the growth seems to have been for another user hostile OS, macOS.

srgpqt• 3 years ago

All modern OS are user-hostile in some way. At least macOS mostly gets out of your way and lets you get your work done.

JamesAdir• 3 years ago

Why not link to the source? https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-st...

bcrosby95• 3 years ago

I'm curious what the raw numbers look like. Is OSX gaining users, or is it just not dropping as fast as Windows?

beautifulfreak• 3 years ago

Not raw numbers, but the percentages of market share by desktop platform are listed here: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-st... Mac is supposedly at 29.62%

willio58• 3 years ago

Small feedback for whoever created that graph: Mac OSX was renamed to MacOs 7 years ago.

Larger feedback: Why is iOS on that graph? It's supposed to be desktop software but it shows a small spike for it a few years ago.

zamadatix8• 3 years ago

I'm not affiliated with Statcounter but I think I can answer both of those since I play with these charts a lot.

Regarding OS X calling it macOS wouldn't be any better since it includes counts of users from both. It'd probably make more sense to just call the group "Mac" or "macOS/OS X" but it's too late to change the name of the category since paid users had been exporting the data into tools expecting "OS X" and it's a silly thing to break that for. Similarly splitting the two into separate categories or changing the display name vs data name is more problematic than using the old name. The OS version breakdown for macs started in 2017, after the name change, and uses the macOS name for the overall category as well as for the newer operating systems in that category so they are definitely aware and keeping up with the name changes where it makes sense to.

If you change the graph settings to include tablets it'll give an in-graph note that they weren't tracking tablets and consoles as different from desktops until the start of August 2012. It'd probably be good to include that note in the desktop view as well though. For iOS that means iPads (launched April 2010) were bucketed as desktop browsing sessions rather than tablet until that point. While it's safe to assume all of those should be relabeled tablet their policy on data changes is after 45 days they will not go back and modify/correct data.

duskwuff• 3 years ago

Interesting to see how much the Chrome market share seems to be driven by education -- it drops noticeably every year between June and August, when students are on summer vacation.

johnea2• 3 years ago

No raw numbers, no cooked numbers, really no information of any kind.

That doesn't even really qualify as an "article".

More just like an excuse to send out links to a website...

_ea1k• 3 years ago

The worst thing is that we've traded one monopoly (MS via Office and Windows) for a different set of monopolists. How dependent are organizations on Google Drive these days and what would the switching costs look like?

tetris11• 3 years ago

Google's online suite doesn't.do anything special anymore, people just use it for convenience and because its free. There are many alternatives who can fill the vacuum the moment it stops being free and Google know this

bpodgursky• 3 years ago

That's... really not true. Gsuite is the default choice for new businesses (as a paid product) because of the integration between email and docs.

zamadatix8• 3 years ago

In regards to the above about organizations they definitely pay for it. Particularly a large percentage of the Google Workspace and Chromebook users are K-12. As another example my previous place of employment was a healthcare org that switched ~150k users from O365 to (what was then called) G Suite for a large annual subscription and it really wasn't much cheaper.

Invictus0• 3 years ago

I have to question the data if iOS and Android are included as options for "desktop OS"

sct202• 3 years ago

Android has different user agents than Chrome OS, so that should be relatively clean. The larger iPads don't identify differently than Macbook user agents anymore, but the trackers may have been able to separate them based on additional checks. AFAIK the iPad mini still identifies as an iPad.

shmerl2• 3 years ago

Would be better if it was replaced by Linux, not by macOS. Though Linux at 2.5% is better than it used to be. But growth is slow.

politelemon• 3 years ago

Yeah pretty sad to see one hostile ecosystem being traded, and lauded, for another. That's how the cycle goes I suppose.

bawolff• 3 years ago

Year of linux on the desktop, here we come!!

shmerl2• 3 years ago

Gaming on Linux becoming really good surely helped a lot.

zwieback2• 3 years ago

What happened in late 2019 to drive up Macs? Covid?

lockhouse• 3 years ago

Apple Silicon.

EDIT:

As pointed out by several child comments I’m off by a year, so I have no idea what is special about 2019 for Macs.

zamadatix8• 3 years ago

That was a full year later in late 2020.

daydream• 3 years ago

Apple Silicon wasn’t even announced until mid-2020. And that bump starts pre-COVID.

trufas• 3 years ago

That's what I thought too, but seems like that happened over a year later.

The data seems very questionable in general, so who knows.

yumraj• 3 years ago

relatively cheap MacBook Air and iPhones.

Ataraxic• 3 years ago

I could consider moving to a windows laptop if the quality/performance of their laptops was anywhere close to apple.

I don't even use an iphone or have any other apple products but the hardware is just _that_ good! The M1 totally changed how I could use my laptop and windows has to at least match it's efficiency, not to mention that the unibody chassis of macs is extremely durable and I no concerns traveling with it without using a case or sleeve of any kind.

MengerSponge3• 3 years ago

And the fact that I have to shut down my windows laptop to have any reasonable expectation that it'll have a charge the next day. Or maybe even later that day.

csdvrx9• 3 years ago

Disable S0 idle to get true S3 sleep or at least create a script to disable wifi and wakeup timers before entering sleep cf https://csdvrx.github.io/

My battery drops by more or less 0.5%/h so a 10h sleep = 5% drop.

csdvrx9• 3 years ago

the hardware is just _that_ good!

lol no

Give me OLED, ECC, a touchscreen then we can start talking about the finer details like a physical shutter for the webcam, or a non-soldered NVMe so the drive can be physically destroyed when the machine is EOLed (or just retained when the machine needs to be shipped for warranty stuff)

r00fus2• 3 years ago

No windows machine runs as cool and fast as an M-series. All else is window dressing.

expertentipp• 3 years ago

It blows my mind that Linux is such a minor niche, with its powerful open utilities and ecosystem. Microsoft choked much of the internet revolution with their clickety-spyery.

alephnerd• 3 years ago

Not really. It's simply not as user friendly from a UI bugs perspective. That's not to say Linux is bad (I love it and Arch Linux is my daily driver), but open source projects simply don't have the number of QA and Design bodies that MS and Apple can devote to UX.

riku_iki• 3 years ago

Article says current Windows drop because of MacOS and ChromeOS pressure, ChromeOS is essentially a linux.

hinata08• 3 years ago

Linux is bad on a lot of aspects.

Get any distribution, and someone in the community is reminding you to feel ashamed because it's bad (get Ubuntu, and you're a traitor to the cause and a newbie. Get Arch, and you're pedantic and unproductive, ...)

Everything is text (configuration files and streams). It is neither user friendly, nor enjoyable to script.

Because of the complexity of the env, you are not hired to work on Linux if you don't have all the certifications (Ansible, CKA, ...), while companies assume that you know how to use Windows.

'Linux' doesn't cater to end users, really.

It feels more dated than Windows or Android.

And it's not advertising anything but speed, which isn't a selling point with modern computers. (Despite the fact it has plenty of other advantages)

Why would you use Linux on a 1000$+ laptop, if it isn't to make a point about OSes ? I believe that most have non-IT jobs and couldn't care less.

BLKNSLVR• 3 years ago

Why would you use Linux on a 1000$+ laptop, if it isn't to make a point about OSes ?

Because, for me, it's a far less stressful experience than using Windows.

(Can't comment on MacOS as I've not used it).

jeffbee• 3 years ago

Installed base size, not market share.

chemmail• 3 years ago

What is the difference?

timbit422• 3 years ago

Base size would be over the past 5 to 7 years or so. Market share is usually one year.

westcort4• 3 years ago

I had a valid for-life license of Office on my Windows 10 PC. When I converted to 11, the software was so slow it was completely unusable. I had to buy a 365 subscription. Then they empowered employers with a nightmarish suite to monitor productivity. They have piloted injection of adware into the operating system. Now, out-of-control AI language models are being implemented and it all amounts to the enshittification of knowledge work. Faced with these hellish anti-human systems, I see Windows and Office increasingly as actively harmful to my working life.

zamadatix8• 3 years ago

As long as you get 2 years out of it per upgrade it's still cheaper to get a new perpetual license.

6c696e7578• 3 years ago

Before buying 365, did you try LibreOffice?

csdvrx9• 3 years ago

Maybe it's different for you, but LibreOffice was significantly slower that Office. Also, the compatibility is not ideal.

westcort4• 3 years ago

I did, but it is not compatible with the docx format, which is used by many clients I work with. I tried installing Office on a Linux Mint PC with CrossOver, but that was unreliable. My main gripe is that software I paid for was stolen by the company I purchased it from (Microsoft).

datadeft• 3 years ago

Please no. I use it every do on mac and I do not want to use such bloatware ever again. We need open standards and much better (simpler, faster, less bloated, yes , less features) implementations for pretty much everything in the Office suite.

csdvrx9• 3 years ago

the software was so slow it was completely unusable

Which version? I just moved from Windows 11, but Office 2010 was flying: Word opened faster than Wordpad!

I had to buy a 365 subscription.

I refuse to do that, and TBH that's why I moved to linux on the desktop (actually, the laptop)

I want my software subscription free, working offline, and independant from the OS.

Wine does just that, and now my licensed Office 2010 that I got for cheap NIB on ebay will be with me forever.

westcort4• 3 years ago

It was Office 2013. I tried CrossOver on Linux, but found it to be unreliable, unfortunately. It is discouraging that a multi-billion-dollar company can steal from paying customers. Office, with no real features for most users but bloat and incompatibility-by-design (docx, xlsx) added since the 1990s, has become an office surveillance tool. Integrating LLMs will further their monopoly by atrophying our ability to write and—-given enough time—perhaps even our ability to think for ourselves.

Anyone from Micro$oft care to comment? Given the exposure here, this may be the single the most expensive single-user software license Microsoft ever stole.

brocklobsta• 3 years ago

What happened in 2019 that an "unknown" OS took over 10% share?

51Cards• 3 years ago

Should also note that this in the US. Worldwide it's still about 72% (but also trending down). I'm going to guess there is something to do with US wallets more easily able to afford Apple products.

hd95489• 3 years ago

Honestly I haven’t turned on my windows desktop pc for over a year now I just don’t need the power. I still use the laptop occasionally for websites with a poor mobile experience but mostly mobile has taken over

timbit422• 3 years ago

This comment would be more useful if we knew which OS you are running on your laptop.

johnea2• 3 years ago

No raw numbers, no cooked numbers, really no information of any kind.

That doesn't even really qualify as an "article".

More just like an excuse to send out links to a website...

fuzzfactor• 3 years ago

Looks like the downturn accelerated to its current more-rapid decline right after the release of the latest Windows 11 22H2 version in late 2022.

This would have been the time the true enthusiasts who were hoping for some respite from user hostility and compromised privacy could finally be giving up for good.

And it doesn't look like Windows 11 relented at all, when it comes to expanding its support for older PC hardware than it did with its original release which was so misguided in this respect. Plus more dark patterns in things like online account approach.

So now that it's even more plain to see how much faster it's getting worse, even the users who embraced Windows 10 have finally had enough.

Now my opinion is based on professional use of W11 since its initial preview.

As always, the product of some absolutely outstanding engineers at Microsoft, some of whom add wonderfully to the discussions on HN.

But somehow or another, even the most excellent code is still getting Ballmerized by a vestige of the corp that seems to still be in position to compromise "what could have been" before it gets a chance to be considered or deployed by users.

Also anecdotally I was the only one using Windows 11 when I presented at a conference a week after W11 was released back in 2021. Didn't notice a single other one this year either.

Windows Market Share Drops to 57% in the US

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