Data Suggests That Windows 8 Will Be Unpopular

Windows 7 is widely regarded as Microsoft’s best operating system to date and is often considered as “Vista done right”, therefore, it’ll take something special to best it. However, it doesn’t appear as if Microsoft will manage to do this, since many people really don’t like the new Metro interface bolted on to the upcoming Windows 8 and the way its use has been made mandatory. This is despite the many significant improvements made to the core of the new operating system to make it faster and sleeker. We now have some hard numbers to support this view and is something that Microsoft will doubtless not like to see, nor have pointed out.

These numbers come in the form of statistics from NetApplications data. In the pie chart below, it can be seen that Windows 8’s market share compared to other Windows operating systems stands at a miniscule 0.19%, which hardly looks like an operating system that’s taking off in popularity.

The chart below shows a comparison between the preview version of Windows 7 and Windows 8, where it can be seen that not only is Windows 8 far less popular, but the difference is actually accelerating. At the start of March, the difference was around 2.5x in favour of Windows 7, while by June that difference had grown to 4x.

This looks bad, even though Windows 7 was released seven weeks earlier in the year. When one looks at numbers like these, the motivation for making a generous Windows 8 upgrade offer and sharply reducing the value of their TechNet subscription becomes clear. So, has Microsoft got a turkey on its hands? It’s beginning to look like it.