Windows 8 Market Share Climbs to 2.7 Percent, Windows 7 Stands Pat

Another month is in the books, and that means another opportunity to examine market share data for Windows 8. Microsoft's touch-friendly operating system (OS) grew its market share to 2.7 percent in February, up slightly from 2.26 percent in January. Going back even further, Windows 8's share of the market was 1.72 percent in December and 1.09 percent in November, a little over a month after it launched to the general public.

Windows 7 still claims the top spot with a 44.55 percent share of the market. That's not much of a change from last month when it claimed a 44.48 percent stake, though it's somewhat interesting that it's share grew since last month, if ever so slightly.


Windows Vista, meanwhile, nudged backwards from 5.24 percent in January to 5.17 percent in February. For all intents and purposes, Vista and Windows 7 have essentially stood pat, while Windows 8 is slowly but steadily finding its way onto more machines.

It will be interesting to see where Windows 8 goes from here now that most of the initial promotions have expired. On the flip side, OEMs are starting to get more aggressive in releasing hybrid systems (Microsoft was reportedly unhappy with its hardware partners for failing to be fully prepared for the Windows 8 launch), and Best Buy is still running a promotion where shoppers can save $100 on touchscreen systems running Windows 8.