Windows 8 reached a market share of 2.26% after it was officially launched three months ago. In January the market share for Windows 7 went down for the first time. The information comes from statistics compiled by Net Applications. The growth in the number of installations of Windows 8 is slow.
Microsoft's latest operating system was released on the 26th of October and in that month Windows 8 accounted for 0.41%. In November it went up to 1.09% and in December to 1.72%.
In January more growth was expected as more new Windows 8 PCs were released. For now the expected growth hasn't yet been achieved and the month saw a decline in market share for Windows 7. It's the first time after the launch of Windows 7 that its market share dropped, it went down from 45.11% to 44.48%.
The decline in market share of Windows 7 was confirmed by another company measuring operating system market shares, Statcounter, who didn't reveal percentages. All versions of Windows combined are good for 91.7% of the market, Mac own 7.08% of the market and Linux 1.21%.
Since the launch of Windows 8 there are regular reports that sales are disappointing. Manufacturers and analysts argue that not many new PCs are sold. Nevertheless recent quarterly figures from Microsoft report that 60 million licenses have been sold. This is almost equal to the amount of licenses sold of the successful Windows 7 in the same time frame.
Which percentage of the 60 million licenses are an update to an existing Windows PC and which percentage is of new computers has not been disclosed.
