Jul 3, 2008

Windows Saturation

The release of Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista and of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP has done little to help break what appears to be a generalized and accentuating case of Windows fatigue. Net Applications stated that SP3 for XP failed to impact the operating system’s continuous market share lost for over a year. Even with SP3 available as of May 6, 2008, XP continued to lose audience and is down from 73.07% in April to 72.12% the past month. Vista continues to climb in statistics, but SP1 didn’t deliver the kick needed to accelerate growth to the levels where focus will no longer shift to XP SP3, Windows 7 or rival products. Vista only climbed from 14.02% in March to 15.26% in May.
Statistics from W3Counter indicate a similar trend with XP dropping from 78.56% to 78.24% in the past two months while Vista jumped from 7.34% to 7.69%. It’s not that Microsoft can’t spare a few tens of millions of users, and it’s not that a large proportion of the Windows audience is shifting toward Mac OS X and Linux, but the Redmond company is finding it harder and harder to boost its share on a market already saturated by its operating system. The software giant is indeed at the top, but the only way is not necessarily down, even if the general trend seems to contradict this perspective.

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