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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Windows 8 Consumer Preview Hits 1 Million Downloads

Microsoft’s Windows 8 Consumer Previewsaw more than one million downloads during the first day of its release, the Building Windows 8 team said via Twitter late Thursday. The beta version of Windows 8 posted on Wednesday morning; it’s not clear whether the first million downloads occurred within or just beyond the first 24 hours of availability. Microsoft recorded three million downloads of the Windows 8 Developer Preview between September and December, 2011.

The latest version of Windows is a dramatic departure from previous versions of Microsoft’s trademark OS. Most notably, the decades old PC desktop has been kicked from its perch as the main Windows interface in favor of a touch-centric Start screen that echoes Windows Phone 7. “Windows 8 reimagines Windows, from the chipset to the experience,” said Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft’s Windows division.

iPad Challenger, PC Dud?

Expectations are high that Windows 8 (also designed for ARM SoCs) will enable tablet manufacturers to mount a serious challenge to Apple’s iPad, which Android tablets have so far failed to do. Whether Windows 8 will be a big winner on traditional PCs, however, is unclear. Microsoft says Windows 8 is just as easy to use with a mouse as it is with a touchscreen, but it requires users to learn a new way of navigating a Windows PC.

The start button is replaced with a hot corner that kicks you back to the new Metro-style touch-friendly Start screen. From there you can choose to open traditional desktop apps or use some of the new Metro apps such as Xbox LIVE Games, Maps, and a Metro-style Internet Explorer.

PC users will also have to be content with full-screen programs when using Metro-style apps, and must learn how to use the new Charms Bar on the far right of the Windows 8 display. The Charms Bar includes important system functions such as Settings, Search, settings for devices connected to your computer, and a new social-networking friendly Share button.

Windows 8 does offer some new features for PC desktop users, including a revampedfile transfer dialog box, tools to deal with duplicate files, faster boot times, and new SkyDrive integration with Windows Explorer (not yet available in the Consumer Preview).

But the main focus for Microsoft in Windows 8 is the touch experience, while the desktop has been turned into a second-class citizen. That appears to be Microsoft’s plan for the moment, anyway.  The reaction of regular PC users to Windows 8′s radical departure is unclear.

Nevertheless, the large numbers of Windows 8 Consumer Preview downloads suggests, at the very least, that users are interested in checking out the newest version of Windows. Also see “15 Awesome Windows 8 ‘Metro-Style’ Apps.”)

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Microsoft Likely to Limit Windows 8 Edition Selections

Microsoft will probably trim the number of Windows 8 editions it will sell later this year, but won’t mimic Apple’s online-only approach to OS upgrades, a retail sales analyst said last week.

In developed countries, including the U.S., Microsoft offers Windows 7 in four SKUs, or editions: Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate. All but Enterprise — available only to volume licensees such as major corporations — are sold to the general public.

Evidence uncovered by ZDNet blogger Stephen Chapman – who found a list of Windows 8 SKUs on a pair of Hewlett-Packard support documents — hints at just three editions of the upcoming OS: a generic “Windows 8,” Professional and Enterprise.

Missing from that list: Ultimate.

“There had been interest in Windows 7 Ultimate,” said Stephen Baker, an analyst with the NPD Group, but sales were skimpy and vastly outnumbered by Home Premium and Professional.

Baker expects that, if Microsoft does produce a Windows 8 Ultimate edition, it would be an OEM-only SKU. In other words, Microsoft would drop it from retail and offer it only to computer makers to pre-install on high-end PCs.

The two retail editions for Windows 8 will most likely be Home Premium — perhaps renamed — for consumers, and Professional for businesses or consumers who need to connect to their workplace network, said Baker.

Enterprise would remain as the upgrade SKU dealt to volume license customers.

Microsoft’s Pattern

Dropping Ultimate from the Windows 8 list would fit with Microsoft’s demotion of that edition in Windows 7. Three years ago and several months before Windows 7 launched, Microsoft confirmed that it was dropping the heavily-criticized “Ultimate Extras” from the version.

Microsoft first pitched Ultimate Extras in the Ultimate edition of Windows Vista, butbuyers blasted the company for a sluggish release pace of the add-ons that Extras had promised.

Windows 7 came in two other editions — Starter and Home Basic — but both were exiled to emerging markets as part of Microsoft’s strategy to offer lower-priced versions that could better compete with the rampant piracy in some countries. The company could retain those developing-markets-only SKUs for Windows 8.

Microsoft has not yet disclosed how many versions of Windows 8 for PCs it will sell, and today declined to share more information about its plans.

An announcement of the Windows 8 lineup could come next week. Microsoft will host a Windows 8 launch event in Barcelona, Spain, on Wednesday, Feb. 29, when it’s also expected to release the Consumer Preview .

Although Microsoft revealed the names of its Windows 7 SKUs in early February 2009, nearly nine months before launching the operating system in late October, the company is on a slower pace for Windows 8 than it used then. For example, Windows 8′s Consumer Preview will appear almost two months later than the early January 2009 ship date of Windows 7′s first public beta.

Upgrade Strategy

One thing Microsoft won’t do, said Baker, is follow Apple’s lead and sell Windows 8 upgrades only online. Last year, Apple sold OS X Lion almost exclusively through the Mac App Store, and recently said it would use the e-market later this year to distribute the Mountain Lion upgrade .

“The [Windows] ecosystem is very different from Apple’s, so no, I don’t think they would go to that extent,” said Baker.

Windows 8 will include Microsoft’s new Windows Store mart as the sole channel for Metro-style apps — and some traditional x86/64 Windows software — but the firm hasn’t said whether Windows 7 users will be able to access the store, and thus make it a destination for upgrade downloads.

With the new store’s emphasis on Metro apps, Baker doubted that Microsoft would use that channel to sell Windows 8 upgrades — people with access to the store would, by definition, already be using the operating system — but acknowledged that the e-store could be used to deliver future upgrades to Windows 8 users.

Instead, Baker said, Microsoft will continue to include brick-and-mortar retail stores in its delivery mix.

“Microsoft wants to be where the customers want to buy,” Baker said. “And the key card approach they used [with Office] cut a lot of the costs of being in stores.”

Microsoft sold some upgrades of Office 2010 at retail minus installation media, instead including a small credit card-sized piece of plastic — called “Product Key Cards” – that unlocked downloaded versions of the suite or added features to the OEM-preloaded Office Starter 2010.

Windows 8 upgrades could be sold using Product Key Cards to activate downloaded trials, or Microsoft could continue to sell electronic editions through its current e-store , where it now sells Windows 7.

Microsoft has not set definitive system requirements for Windows 8 upgrades — much less prices — but has indicated that the new OS will run on PCs now powered by either Vista or Windows 7.

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