Mac OS X Sales Zoom as Windows XP Finally Slumps

On the heels of the launch of Windows 8′s preview, new statistics show that Microsoft’s decade-old Windows XP again plummeted in usage share and will be surpassed by Windows 7 in June.

According to Internet metrics firm Net Applications, Windows XP lost 1.8 percentage points last month to drop to a 45.4 percent share. The decline was the largest since December 2011, and the fourth time in the last 12 months that the aged OS lost around two points of share.

Windows XP also reached a milestone in February, for the first time accounting for less than half of all machines running Windows. Of the PCs powered by Windows, 49.4 percent of them ran XP.

Meanwhile, Windows 7 continued its charge, gaining 1.7 percentage points to end February with 38.1 percent of the desktop operating system usage share.

Assuming their paces hold steady, Windows 7 will take the top spot from XP in June, and has an outside shot of doing so in May.

It couldn’t come too soon for Microsoft, which has been reminding customers that XP will stop receiving security updates in April 2014, and aggressively pushing Windows 7 as the next logical move.

Microsoft’s problem-plagued Vista — the 2007 edition that never managed to capture more than 20 percent of the market — lost about one-tenth of a percentage point, dropping to 8.1 percent.

Windows overall share receded slightly to 91.9 percent, the fourth straight month that the operating system has grown share, stayed flat or lost less than two-tenths of a percentage point. The last time Windows dropped by more than half a percentage point was October 2011.

The Wednesday release of Windows 8 Consumer Preview will not immediately affect share numbers — it’s not expected to ship until this fall — but if the radically-revamped OS catches on, it could mean the end of Windows 7′s climb.

Vista, for example, peaked the same month that Microsoft launched Windows 7 and has been sliding ever since.

Windows XP users will be able to upgrade to Windows 8, assuming their PCs meet the low-level system requirements of the latter: a 1GHz processor and 1GB of RAM. Most analysts, however, expect XP owners, especially businesses that still rely on the old OS, to migrate to Windows 7 rather than that edition’s touch-centric successor.

During February, only 0.02 percent — or two PCs out of every 10,000 — ran Windows 8 Developer Preview, the September 2011 edition that Microsoft opened to all comers.

The next few months will show whether users are trying out Windows 8, and possibly predict its future adoption.

Three years ago when Microsoft delivered the public beta of Windows 7, that OS’s share jumped to 0.2 percent the month after the preview’s debut, and reached half a percentage point within four months. By the time Windows 7 shipped in October 2009, it had acquired a respectable 2.2 percent share.

The beta of Windows Vista was adopted by far fewer users, and the edition accounted for just 0.9 percent of all operating systems the month after it shipped. Vista didn’t reach Windows 7′s launch-month performance until a month and a half later.

If Windows 8′s pre-release adoption rate is on Vista’s scale Microsoft might be in trouble. However, if the Consumer Preview’s usage share quickly climbs, the company may have another hit on its hands.

Lion Gains Share

Like Windows 7, Apple’s Mac OS X gained ground in February, growing its share by more than half a percentage point and ending the month with 6.9 percent of the usage market. It was the Mac operating system’s biggest one-month increase in Net Applications’ tracking history, and put Apple within spitting distance of its October 2011 record amount of usage share.

Among Macs, OS X 10.7, aka Lion, again boosted its share; in February, the mid-2011 edition accounted for 38.9 percent of all Apple desktop operating systems in use.

Snow Leopard, or OS X 10.6, retained its lead over Lion, however. The 2009 version powered 43.4% of all Mac desktops and notebooks.

Apple has also announced a 2012 operating system upgrade, dubbed OS X Mountain Lion, that it will deliver in late summer. If experts are right, and Apple offers aMountain Lion upgrade free of charge to some Mac users, that edition’s share could climb much faster than either past for-a-fee OS X versions or even Windows 8.

Net Applications calculates operating system usage share with data obtained from more than 160 million unique visitors who browse 40,000 Web sites that the company monitors. More OS share data can be found on the company’s site.

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Why Microsoft is More Afraid of Google Than Apple

Microsoft has recently launched an all-out advertising assault against Google, attacking everything from the company’s privacy policies to what Microsoft considers the inadequacy of Google Apps. Meanwhile, it’s been mum about Apple, and some unconfirmed rumors say it might even be developing an Office app for the iPad. Here are three reasons Microsoft fears Google more than it does Apple.

The fight for the enterprise

With Google Apps, Google has taken dead aim at the core of Microsoft’s business — the enterprise. Windows is no longer Microsoft’s cash cow; Microsoft’s business offerings have eclipsed it. The two largest revenue generators for Microsoft are now the Business Division and the Server & Tools Division. Google Apps threatens both those divisions. Apple, meanwhile, may make short-term gains in the enterprise, but, in the long run, it cares more about consumers than the enterprise, so it doesn’t threaten Microsoft.

That’s why Microsoft recently released a scathing anti-Google Apps video on YouTube, titled “Googlighting,” which features a slick, sleazy salesman pitching Google Apps. Microsoft’s Tom Rizzo says on his blog: “Many businesses find that Googlighting also means taking shortcuts, making assumptions about how people should work, and generally failing to build and deploy solutions which meet a wide range of business needs.”

The fight for Office suites

Office represents another cash cow for Microsoft (it’s part of the Business Division), in the enterprise as well as for consumers. And Google Docs directly targets Office, both as a free consumer service as well as part of Google Apps.

If Office loses ground to Google Docs, not only will it be hurt with consumers, but if it becomes more widely accepted, enterprises may consider it, and ultimately use Google Apps as well.

Unverified rumors surfaced this week that Microsoft has been developing an Office app for the iPad, and although Microsoft has denied them, it has done so in a way that leaves open the possibility that such an app is in the works. An Office app on the iPad would certainly help fend off Google Docs.

The fight for search

Google continues to dominate Internet search, but Microsoft recognizes that it needs to have a serious search presence if it is going to grow and thrive on the Internet as well as in mobile. So Microsoft continues to spend serious money to build and promote Bing. Google isn’t giving an inch, for example outbidding Microsoft to keep Google search as the default search engine for Firefox.

To try and scare people away from Google search, Microsoft has targeted Google on privacy issues,via advertising campaigns as well as blogs and charges to the press. When the Wall Street Journal charged Google with avoiding privacy protections in Apple’s Safari browser, Ryan Gavin, Microsoft’s head of marketing for Internet Explorer charged, “This type of tracking by Google is not new. The novelty here is that Google apparently circumvented the privacy protections built into Apple’s Safari browser in a deliberate, and ultimately, successful fashion.”

Clearly, criticizing Google on privacy is one of primary ways Microsoft hopes to gain market share.

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