11 ms·

Desktop Operating System Market Share

136 points by AJAlabs 10y ago

AJAlabs 10y ago
It's interesting to see that there are more Windows XP users than there are Mac OS X users running all versions combined.
- Razengan 10y ago
  I wonder how it would look like if we ignored pirated copies (i.e. pretty much most of Asia, Africa and the Middle East) and server versions.
  - izacus 10y ago
    What would be the point of that?
    - awinder 10y ago
      Not to speak for the original poster but as a dev I'd like to know what my addressable market is if I'm developing a desktop-focused app, and excluding biz machines and people who will never pay would help there
      - bostand 10y ago
        Well, a significant number of osx machines in those places are mackintoshes' :) Not that it changes anything
        majewsky 10y ago
        > a significant number [citation needed]
        bostand 10y ago
        Walk into a random pc shop in India and ask for a cheap mac ;)
      - izacus 10y ago
        If you're developing an app you need to figure out addressable market separately for it anyway. None of the apps I've developed until now really have the same % as any of those graphs - your audience will vary with the use-case. The only thing the original proposal would do is make Apple look better, but it wouldn't really be USEFUL for anything.
- scholia 10y ago
  That's because there are still a lot of XP users in SE Asia, and particularly in China. Netmarketshare doesn't divulge country numbers unless you are a paying customer. Netmarketshare also "balances" its numbers, so the results could vary a lot according to how much weight it gives to China.
  - herbst 10y ago
    Interesting side note: ive only swen Windows 7 discs so far on markets in SEA. Even cambodia seems win7 dominated. But they also sell cheap laptops with mint on them.
- protomikron 10y ago
  Even all Mac OS X and Linux combined is less than Windows XP. Think about that.
tantalor 10y ago
Where is Chrome OS? Part of Linux?
- achamayou 10y ago
  Probably others, since the User-Agent doesn't mention Linux and contains "CrOS" instead.
headcanon 10y ago
I have a feeling this is skewed by massive enterprise purchasing of workstations - they will naturally gravitate towards a stable windows version, and tend not to get upgraded very often. I'd like to see a chart of desktop computer market share that people purchase for themselves.
- hota_mazi 10y ago
  Even so, that "massive enterprise purchasing" would be dwarfed by the number of computers bought for personal use.
  - kobeya 10y ago
    ... citation required? With windows terminals on every office desk, every point of sale station, every library computer room, etc. I don't think it is inconceivable that "enterprise" purchasing outnumbers personal purchases.
    - jasonlotito 10y ago
      So does the original claim. That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
- akiselev 10y ago
  Depending on the industry, a lot of your tools might not just be Windows only but also tied to an old (and possibly unsupported in the case of XP) version. This is endemic to any industry involving capital equipment like machining centers or biotech lab equipment that have serviceable lifetimes measured in the decades. A decade ago this wasn't really a problem because this equipment was isolated but now with industrial IoT and modern IT networks they're becoming more and more vulnerable. One mom and pop machine shop I ordered from got tired of using USB drives to haul CAD files and machining instructions between systems so they started using Google Apps with Drive as the sharing mechanism. In order to do that, they had to hook up several 10 year old Windows XP machines to the internet and within weeks they got hit by the blaster worm or some other pre-SP1 virus. That cost them weeks of machine time on their older CNCs and hundreds of man hours doing incident reports for their bigger clients like the defense contractors. The situation in the clinical biotech companies I worked at was never that bad because of HIPPA compliance and more focus on networked services like lab databases but still atrocious. So much of our industrial infrastructure is built on a house of cards.
mariobertschler 10y ago
Notable: there are almost 3x more Windows NT devices online than Mac OS X 10.8
- mattnewton 10y ago
  Is that really notable? They are both small numbers, and those NT machines are likely at companies with upgrade policies versus people who choose not to upgrade their personal macs for free.
  - mariobertschler 10y ago
    I see this rather in favor for Mac OS X as their upgrade system definitely works, 10.8 is not old at all (2012), Windows NT is from the 90s mostly pre-internet. It's putting things into perspective.
    - bostand 10y ago
      It also shows what a solid OS Windows NT has been :) Also there are many valid reasons to not upgrade from NT...
      - jmiserez 10y ago
        > Also there are many valid reasons to not upgrade from NT... Not if you expose your machine to the internet!
        hedora 10y ago
        I wonder about NT with nothing but up to date ssh exposed vs win 10 with nothing exposed except the pile of obscure phone home protocols you can't turn off. I suspect NT wins unless there are unpatched TCP/IP exploits. I wonder what percentage of in-use ATMs make a similar bet.
        dom0 10y ago
russellbeattie 10y ago
I thought it was weird that "other" had such a high percentage 4.98% - but then I clicked on the more broadly grouped chart (https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8&qpcustomd=0 https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share...) and it dropped to 0% - "other" meant other versions than those listed.
- shortformblog 10y ago
  This is a much better chart than the one linked. The other chart, due to the way it breaks down versions, is a little misleading because of how it splits up market share of older OS versions (mostly with OSX, where only two versions are accounted for in the graph itself).
- ianai 10y ago
  It really seemed like Linux and Mac were much higher up these days. A more interesting statistic would be "OS usage times" i.e. what are people looking at for the most hours. Probably nigh possible to get. Wait, advertisers probably know.
  - cm2187 10y ago
    I think what you are after is "silicon valley / developpers usage time".
  - tdb7893 10y ago
    I think the perception of Linux and Mac being used a ton is only in some developer circles. Unless the do a bunch of programming outside of work petty much all the developers I know use Windows at home.
russellbeattie 10y ago
Are Hacker News reader stats public? It'd be interesting to see how skewed the desktop OSs are...
- gravypod 10y ago
  I don't know. Many sectors require windows and I assume most HN readers are bored at work. You'll probably see a similar situation although my guess is Mac and Linux will be slightly higher on the totempoll. Probably more like 3-5% for Linux I'd say. Maybe even higher. I'd love to see the data like you say, would be interesting.
  - greenhatman 10y ago
    The Stack Overflow developer survey had both Mac and Linux at 20% in 2015. But Mac shot up to 26% in 2016. I think Hacker News will likely have very similar stats. Maybe somewhat more Mac and Linux leaning, even. http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016#technology-desktop-operating-system http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016#tech...
- MichaelApproved 10y ago
  People consume HN through 3rd parties, such as Twitter, RSS, and Reddit. Whatever the stats are with the website, they won't give you an accurate view of the actual HN reader.
  - Freak_NL 10y ago
    Wouldn't it be a representative sampling though? Unless users of certain OS'es are more inclined to use such third party clients than other users.
rodgerd 10y ago
ITT: "I'd like to see numbers that confirm my bias."
kriro 10y ago
Linux has about half of the market share of all OS X versions combined. Not too bad considering there's not exactly many systems that come with Linux preinstalled. Still minuscule compared to the Windows market share but I'd gladly announce that the year of the Linux desktop has finally arrived if it gets to OS X level...which isn't all that far to go.
- quonn 10y ago
  Nitpick: More like a third (0.36).
  - kriro 10y ago
    You are correct, I only scanned the other OS X versions from the bottom and kind of missed the 1.1% of 10.10.
- bostand 10y ago
  I think the actual Linux market share is higher. I know a lot of enterprises that have switched to Linux (for reason completely unrelated to the os itself).
  - kobeya 10y ago
    which should be reflected in these numbers, no?
    - bostand 10y ago
      Look at their sampling methods. They use analytics from certain sites (news, social media, gov, ...) A lot of enterprises are beyond proxies and many places don't allow you to access internet outside a few select sites
      - majewsky 10y ago
        A proxy won't mingle with the User-Agent header, or with the tracking JS that runs in the browser.
shp0ngle 10y ago
Well the year of the Linux desktop never came, it seems.
- hedora 10y ago
  If you define "desktop" as 'not a portable computer', I suspect MacOS will drop a lot, percentage wise. Maybe Linux is already #2 in that market niche. Plenty of rack mounted linux machines run firefox/chrome...
  - coldtea 10y ago
    And if you define desktop as "linux running computer" Linux totally dominates the category. But "year of the Linux desktop" has a clear and well defined meaning since 1999 or so -- it's about people running Linux (and Linux userland, not Android) on their personal computers, whether desktops or laptops.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      Also Android has very few Linux exposed to application developers, Google could change it for something else and only OEMs would be pissed off. Only these APIs are allowed to be used. https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/libs.html https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/libs.html
- Pxtl 10y ago
  Yeah, but the year of the Linux handheld has been here for quite some time. When do we get LibreOffice and Blender for AOSP?
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Good luck, this is the set of allowed native API on Android. https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/libs.html https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/libs.html As of Android 7, if the application tries to link to system libraries not part of that list, it will just get killed. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2016/06/improving-stability-with-private-cc.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2016/06/improving-...
st3fan 10y ago
I am very happy to be in that 6% share that macOS has.
- sydd 10y ago
  I am happy to be in the majority camp.
  - sydd 10y ago
    Why the downvotes? I just stated my opinion. I thought that this site was a little less childish than this.
    - grzm 10y ago
      Speculation, but members may not consider the comment substantive. Note that your parent, which is similar, was also downvoted.
Walkman 10y ago
OS X less than 5% ? That's really surprising!
- scholia 10y ago
  According to Wikipedia: "As of November 2013, Apple's online store was available in 39 countries, with physical Apple Stores numbering 444 in sixteen countries (263 US/181 elsewhere). The world has roughly 196 countries. I don't know how many of those you can buy Macs in, but I'd expect there are gaps. However, a lot poor countries have access to cheap PCs, or local cheap PC assemblers, or users can build their own machines.
  - statictype 10y ago
    There are countries where Apple cannot legally open a retail store. They go through tie ups and partnerships with local companies to setup stores and sell their products. For example, in India - every major city probably has at least 4-5 "Apple Stores" which are not fully owned by Apple and thus probably don't factor into these stats.
    - herbst 10y ago
      This. In thailand and cambodia apple seems widely available. None of those is a official store tho. I think i've seen more than those 400 stores in Thailand alone.
      - kagamine 10y ago
        In Norway too, there is a large chain official partner, essentially an Apple Store operated by not-Apple, but the online store is official Apple, I think that is what OP was referring to. IN some countries there is no Apple Store online.
ebbv 10y ago
Without some information on how this data is calculated it's pretty tough too take it seriously. Not that I doubt Windows is the majority OS, it obviously is. But I didn't need a chart to know that. The chart may be inaccurate depending on the source of the data and how it was extrapolated.
- scholia 10y ago
  See https://www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#Methodology https://www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#Methodology "The data is compiled from approximately 160 million unique visits per month. The information published on www.netmarketshare.com is an aggregation of the data from this network of hosted website traffic statistics. In addition, we classify 430+ referral sources identified as search engines. Aggregate traffic referrals from these engines are summarized and reported monthly. The statistics for search engines include both organic and sponsored referrals."
fabrika 10y ago
Something must be very wrong with their methodology. I don't believe the total installed base is so volatile that the Mac share jumps from 7% to 9.57% then down to 6% within a single year. https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=9&qpaf=&qpcustom=Mac&qpcustomb=0&qpsp=203&qpnp=13&qptimeframe=M https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=9&qpaf=&qpc...
- Twisell 10y ago
  I'm actually very curious to find out how that will turn out in the long run because another source of the same kind definitively show quite a different trend for MacOS (and IMHO more continuous & realistic) : http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-ww-monthly-201512-201612 http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-ww-monthly-201512-201612
- blazespin 10y ago
  https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=9&qpaf=&qpcustom=Mac&qpcustomb=0&qpsp=2014&qpnp=4&qptimeframe=Y https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=9&qpaf=&qpc... It's not that hard to believe. Their iPad + keyboard is cannibalizing their desktop. I'd love to see iOS + Mac versus Windows + Mobile Windows
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- scholia 10y ago
  > Something must be very wrong with their methodology. I don't believe the total installed base is so volatile that the Mac share jumps from 7% to 9.57% then down to 6% within a single year. Agreed. And it's by no means the first such example. However, the numbers are based on unique visitors to a range of websites. The variation might reflect a wide variation in web accesses from different operating systems (though I doubt it), but it doesn't directly measure the installed base.
- anonymfus 10y ago
  They weight users from different countries by CIA's total numbers of internet users in these countries. (https://www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#Country https://www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#Country ) So some country having a big share of internet users according to CIA and small and volatile number of users counted by Netmarketshare can be the reason. China has about 22% of internet users according to CIA. Is there a way to estimate how many are counted by Netmarketshare?
potatosoup 10y ago
OS X Sierra (10.12) adoption chart https://www.gosquared.com/global/mac/sierra/#beta https://www.gosquared.com/global/mac/sierra/#beta Looks like people are split 30/30/30 between the last three versions with many holdouts. Things look way better in iOS land (76% on latest version): https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/ https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/
jcoffland 10y ago
Here are some other OS usage stats. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp http://cdn1b.static.pornhub.phncdn.com/insights-static//wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4-pornhub-insights-2016-year-review-operating-system.png http://cdn1b.static.pornhub.phncdn.com/insights-static//wp-c...
- galago 10y ago
  I would like to see the PornHub numbers for desktop and mobile combined. That would give a better sense of what's going on. My guess for the consumer market is that it looks like Windows is in solid shape, but the reality is that people are spending more time on mobile devices, even if they have a PC somewhere in the house.
  - bostand 10y ago
    Because pornhub stats are skewed towards services that ..ummm ... allow one handed use? Wouldn't that affect iPhone 7 vs 7+ numbers?
  - galago 10y ago
    My comment wasn't specific to pornography. I think its generally understood that home browsing is moving off desktops.
    - michaelmrose 10y ago
      Do you mean more people are getting laptops or that people are moving off laptops/desktops to mobile devices?
yetanotherme 10y ago
https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qpcustom=FreeBSD&qpcustomb=0 https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qp... They need more decimal points to explain it
phkamp 10y ago
"desktop" is a totally useless and nonsensical classification, when they do not (which is obvious from their numbers) count laptops plugged into a screen & keyboard for the duration of a workday as a "desktop".
- coldtea 10y ago
  Nonsensical? Laptops/desktop are a form factor / product category, not a usage pattern. The same way as 20kg desktop PC on boats are not "laptops". Sometimes you do need to know how its used (e.g. if you sell peripherals that only make sense for "road warriors" you will want to know how many use their machines at a specific location all day, regardless of form factor), but most of the time, laptop/desktop distinction based on form, like the one we always been using, makes far more sense.
sureshn 10y ago
With 88.67% of desktop OS being different flavors of microsoft OS, it seems a bit overwhelming that its still that high , especially after a massive acceptance of ubuntu. Its shocking that Apple has failed to make inroads in any other country outside the USA. One wonders why it never crossed their minds. This gives Microsoft a great opportunity to win back this big iPhone using crowd by making their Apps platform independent which they are doing already. I see Microsoft coming back big time like the windows 98 , 2000 and VB 6.0 kind of good times awaits them now :)
- goodcanadian 10y ago
  Two thoughts come to mind: 1) If Microsoft is already/still at ~90%, is there really room for a big time come back? Getting the rest of the market is small potatoes compared to what they already have. 2) How much of the market does desktop represent, anyway? Most people I know do not own a desktop. They may have a laptop, but they may also only have a tablet and/or phone. Now, I believe you are actually suggesting that Microsoft can leverage their desktop market to get back into tablets and phones, but I don't know . . . so far, their efforts have been disappointing, and frankly, people are used to their Android devices, so Microsoft will actually be the weird phone even if it is the normal desktop.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - michaelmrose 10y ago
    Desktop is synonymous with laptop/desktop machine in fact it is actually difficult to separate the two. I think this is the case here.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Here in Germany most consumer store chains have replaced hybrid Android tablets and netbooks with Windows 10 versions. Many of those devices do allow for a SIM card as well.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
You have to love the big spike in Windows 98 usage in Feb '16 (https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qpcustom=Windows+98&qpcustomb=0 https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qp...)
- PetahNZ 10y ago
  That big jump from 0.01% to 0.01%
gmuslera 10y ago
Last months saw an example of a distributed database/api service scraping, using hundreds of thousands of IPs of around the world, and random user agents (I think that all started with Mozilla/5.0, but the rest were from random historical user agents), to avoid rate limits. The OSs referenced in those user agents went back to early windows versions, OS/2 Warp and Maemo (to put 2 examples that hurt knowing that were fake). If this site take as base sites/URLs that are somewhat hit by that kind of traffic the stats could be very misleading.
- herbst 10y ago
  Yeah. Where is "vitaly rules" in this graph? I have medium sizes sites where that is 2-7% of the traffic right now.
sogen 10y ago
This is a duplicate from a couple days ago
yabatopia 10y ago
Are there somewhere market share statistics available for desktop and mobile operating systems combined? The separation between desktop and mobile devices feels a bit outdated. How does Windows relate to Android or iOS, for example?
fergie 10y ago
Can OSX plus Linux combined really be below 7%? If so, I live in a freaky bubble.
- erelde 10y ago
  Windows must have at least half of its share from corporate clients. It's about the only desktop OS used in a corporate environment.
- MagnumOpus 10y ago
  If you are browsing HN, you likely live and work in a bubble with massive over-representation of the very rich (who buy Macs disproportionately) and the IT tinkerers (who use Linux disproportionately). (This is the case even for the US, but even more so worldwide, where a Macbook costs a month's gross salary rather than a week's worth.)
konficker 10y ago
Hate to be pedantic but Linux is not an operating system.

136 points by AJAlabs 10y ago

It's interesting to see that there are more Windows XP users than there are Mac OS X users running all versions combined.

Razengan 10y ago
I wonder how it would look like if we ignored pirated copies (i.e. pretty much most of Asia, Africa and the Middle East) and server versions.
- izacus 10y ago
  What would be the point of that?
  - awinder 10y ago
    Not to speak for the original poster but as a dev I'd like to know what my addressable market is if I'm developing a desktop-focused app, and excluding biz machines and people who will never pay would help there
    - bostand 10y ago
      Well, a significant number of osx machines in those places are mackintoshes' :) Not that it changes anything
      - majewsky 10y ago
        > a significant number [citation needed]
        bostand 10y ago
        Walk into a random pc shop in India and ask for a cheap mac ;)
    - izacus 10y ago
      If you're developing an app you need to figure out addressable market separately for it anyway. None of the apps I've developed until now really have the same % as any of those graphs - your audience will vary with the use-case. The only thing the original proposal would do is make Apple look better, but it wouldn't really be USEFUL for anything.
scholia 10y ago
That's because there are still a lot of XP users in SE Asia, and particularly in China. Netmarketshare doesn't divulge country numbers unless you are a paying customer. Netmarketshare also "balances" its numbers, so the results could vary a lot according to how much weight it gives to China.
- herbst 10y ago
  Interesting side note: ive only swen Windows 7 discs so far on markets in SEA. Even cambodia seems win7 dominated. But they also sell cheap laptops with mint on them.
protomikron 10y ago
Even all Mac OS X and Linux combined is less than Windows XP. Think about that.

tantalor 10y ago

Where is Chrome OS? Part of Linux?

achamayou 10y ago
Probably others, since the User-Agent doesn't mention Linux and contains "CrOS" instead.

headcanon 10y ago

I have a feeling this is skewed by massive enterprise purchasing of workstations - they will naturally gravitate towards a stable windows version, and tend not to get upgraded very often. I'd like to see a chart of desktop computer market share that people purchase for themselves.

hota_mazi 10y ago
Even so, that "massive enterprise purchasing" would be dwarfed by the number of computers bought for personal use.
- kobeya 10y ago
  ... citation required? With windows terminals on every office desk, every point of sale station, every library computer room, etc. I don't think it is inconceivable that "enterprise" purchasing outnumbers personal purchases.
  - jasonlotito 10y ago
    So does the original claim. That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
akiselev 10y ago
Depending on the industry, a lot of your tools might not just be Windows only but also tied to an old (and possibly unsupported in the case of XP) version. This is endemic to any industry involving capital equipment like machining centers or biotech lab equipment that have serviceable lifetimes measured in the decades. A decade ago this wasn't really a problem because this equipment was isolated but now with industrial IoT and modern IT networks they're becoming more and more vulnerable. One mom and pop machine shop I ordered from got tired of using USB drives to haul CAD files and machining instructions between systems so they started using Google Apps with Drive as the sharing mechanism. In order to do that, they had to hook up several 10 year old Windows XP machines to the internet and within weeks they got hit by the blaster worm or some other pre-SP1 virus. That cost them weeks of machine time on their older CNCs and hundreds of man hours doing incident reports for their bigger clients like the defense contractors. The situation in the clinical biotech companies I worked at was never that bad because of HIPPA compliance and more focus on networked services like lab databases but still atrocious. So much of our industrial infrastructure is built on a house of cards.

mariobertschler 10y ago

Notable: there are almost 3x more Windows NT devices online than Mac OS X 10.8

mattnewton 10y ago
Is that really notable? They are both small numbers, and those NT machines are likely at companies with upgrade policies versus people who choose not to upgrade their personal macs for free.
- mariobertschler 10y ago
  I see this rather in favor for Mac OS X as their upgrade system definitely works, 10.8 is not old at all (2012), Windows NT is from the 90s mostly pre-internet. It's putting things into perspective.
  - bostand 10y ago
    It also shows what a solid OS Windows NT has been :) Also there are many valid reasons to not upgrade from NT...
    - jmiserez 10y ago
      > Also there are many valid reasons to not upgrade from NT... Not if you expose your machine to the internet!
      - hedora 10y ago
        I wonder about NT with nothing but up to date ssh exposed vs win 10 with nothing exposed except the pile of obscure phone home protocols you can't turn off. I suspect NT wins unless there are unpatched TCP/IP exploits. I wonder what percentage of in-use ATMs make a similar bet.
        dom0 10y ago

russellbeattie 10y ago

I thought it was weird that "other" had such a high percentage 4.98% - but then I clicked on the more broadly grouped chart (https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8&qpcustomd=0 https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share...) and it dropped to 0% - "other" meant other versions than those listed.

shortformblog 10y ago
This is a much better chart than the one linked. The other chart, due to the way it breaks down versions, is a little misleading because of how it splits up market share of older OS versions (mostly with OSX, where only two versions are accounted for in the graph itself).
ianai 10y ago
It really seemed like Linux and Mac were much higher up these days. A more interesting statistic would be "OS usage times" i.e. what are people looking at for the most hours. Probably nigh possible to get. Wait, advertisers probably know.
- cm2187 10y ago
  I think what you are after is "silicon valley / developpers usage time".
- tdb7893 10y ago
  I think the perception of Linux and Mac being used a ton is only in some developer circles. Unless the do a bunch of programming outside of work petty much all the developers I know use Windows at home.

russellbeattie 10y ago

Are Hacker News reader stats public? It'd be interesting to see how skewed the desktop OSs are...

gravypod 10y ago
I don't know. Many sectors require windows and I assume most HN readers are bored at work. You'll probably see a similar situation although my guess is Mac and Linux will be slightly higher on the totempoll. Probably more like 3-5% for Linux I'd say. Maybe even higher. I'd love to see the data like you say, would be interesting.
- greenhatman 10y ago
  The Stack Overflow developer survey had both Mac and Linux at 20% in 2015. But Mac shot up to 26% in 2016. I think Hacker News will likely have very similar stats. Maybe somewhat more Mac and Linux leaning, even. http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016#technology-desktop-operating-system http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016#tech...
MichaelApproved 10y ago
People consume HN through 3rd parties, such as Twitter, RSS, and Reddit. Whatever the stats are with the website, they won't give you an accurate view of the actual HN reader.
- Freak_NL 10y ago
  Wouldn't it be a representative sampling though? Unless users of certain OS'es are more inclined to use such third party clients than other users.

rodgerd 10y ago

ITT: "I'd like to see numbers that confirm my bias."

kriro 10y ago

Linux has about half of the market share of all OS X versions combined. Not too bad considering there's not exactly many systems that come with Linux preinstalled. Still minuscule compared to the Windows market share but I'd gladly announce that the year of the Linux desktop has finally arrived if it gets to OS X level...which isn't all that far to go.

quonn 10y ago
Nitpick: More like a third (0.36).
- kriro 10y ago
  You are correct, I only scanned the other OS X versions from the bottom and kind of missed the 1.1% of 10.10.
bostand 10y ago
I think the actual Linux market share is higher. I know a lot of enterprises that have switched to Linux (for reason completely unrelated to the os itself).
- kobeya 10y ago
  which should be reflected in these numbers, no?
  - bostand 10y ago
    Look at their sampling methods. They use analytics from certain sites (news, social media, gov, ...) A lot of enterprises are beyond proxies and many places don't allow you to access internet outside a few select sites
    - majewsky 10y ago
      A proxy won't mingle with the User-Agent header, or with the tracking JS that runs in the browser.

shp0ngle 10y ago

Well the year of the Linux desktop never came, it seems.

hedora 10y ago
If you define "desktop" as 'not a portable computer', I suspect MacOS will drop a lot, percentage wise. Maybe Linux is already #2 in that market niche. Plenty of rack mounted linux machines run firefox/chrome...
- coldtea 10y ago
  And if you define desktop as "linux running computer" Linux totally dominates the category. But "year of the Linux desktop" has a clear and well defined meaning since 1999 or so -- it's about people running Linux (and Linux userland, not Android) on their personal computers, whether desktops or laptops.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Also Android has very few Linux exposed to application developers, Google could change it for something else and only OEMs would be pissed off. Only these APIs are allowed to be used. https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/libs.html https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/libs.html
Pxtl 10y ago
Yeah, but the year of the Linux handheld has been here for quite some time. When do we get LibreOffice and Blender for AOSP?
- pjmlp 10y ago
  Good luck, this is the set of allowed native API on Android. https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/libs.html https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/libs.html As of Android 7, if the application tries to link to system libraries not part of that list, it will just get killed. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2016/06/improving-stability-with-private-cc.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2016/06/improving-...

st3fan 10y ago

I am very happy to be in that 6% share that macOS has.

sydd 10y ago
I am happy to be in the majority camp.
- sydd 10y ago
  Why the downvotes? I just stated my opinion. I thought that this site was a little less childish than this.
  - grzm 10y ago
    Speculation, but members may not consider the comment substantive. Note that your parent, which is similar, was also downvoted.

Walkman 10y ago

OS X less than 5% ? That's really surprising!

scholia 10y ago
According to Wikipedia: "As of November 2013, Apple's online store was available in 39 countries, with physical Apple Stores numbering 444 in sixteen countries (263 US/181 elsewhere). The world has roughly 196 countries. I don't know how many of those you can buy Macs in, but I'd expect there are gaps. However, a lot poor countries have access to cheap PCs, or local cheap PC assemblers, or users can build their own machines.
- statictype 10y ago
  There are countries where Apple cannot legally open a retail store. They go through tie ups and partnerships with local companies to setup stores and sell their products. For example, in India - every major city probably has at least 4-5 "Apple Stores" which are not fully owned by Apple and thus probably don't factor into these stats.
  - herbst 10y ago
    This. In thailand and cambodia apple seems widely available. None of those is a official store tho. I think i've seen more than those 400 stores in Thailand alone.
    - kagamine 10y ago
      In Norway too, there is a large chain official partner, essentially an Apple Store operated by not-Apple, but the online store is official Apple, I think that is what OP was referring to. IN some countries there is no Apple Store online.

ebbv 10y ago

Without some information on how this data is calculated it's pretty tough too take it seriously. Not that I doubt Windows is the majority OS, it obviously is. But I didn't need a chart to know that. The chart may be inaccurate depending on the source of the data and how it was extrapolated.

scholia 10y ago
See https://www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#Methodology https://www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#Methodology "The data is compiled from approximately 160 million unique visits per month. The information published on www.netmarketshare.com is an aggregation of the data from this network of hosted website traffic statistics. In addition, we classify 430+ referral sources identified as search engines. Aggregate traffic referrals from these engines are summarized and reported monthly. The statistics for search engines include both organic and sponsored referrals."

fabrika 10y ago

Something must be very wrong with their methodology. I don't believe the total installed base is so volatile that the Mac share jumps from 7% to 9.57% then down to 6% within a single year. https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=9&qpaf=&qpcustom=Mac&qpcustomb=0&qpsp=203&qpnp=13&qptimeframe=M https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=9&qpaf=&qpc...

Twisell 10y ago
I'm actually very curious to find out how that will turn out in the long run because another source of the same kind definitively show quite a different trend for MacOS (and IMHO more continuous & realistic) : http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-ww-monthly-201512-201612 http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-ww-monthly-201512-201612
blazespin 10y ago
https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=9&qpaf=&qpcustom=Mac&qpcustomb=0&qpsp=2014&qpnp=4&qptimeframe=Y https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=9&qpaf=&qpc... It's not that hard to believe. Their iPad + keyboard is cannibalizing their desktop. I'd love to see iOS + Mac versus Windows + Mobile Windows
- deleted 10y ago
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scholia 10y ago
> Something must be very wrong with their methodology. I don't believe the total installed base is so volatile that the Mac share jumps from 7% to 9.57% then down to 6% within a single year. Agreed. And it's by no means the first such example. However, the numbers are based on unique visitors to a range of websites. The variation might reflect a wide variation in web accesses from different operating systems (though I doubt it), but it doesn't directly measure the installed base.
anonymfus 10y ago
They weight users from different countries by CIA's total numbers of internet users in these countries. (https://www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#Country https://www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#Country ) So some country having a big share of internet users according to CIA and small and volatile number of users counted by Netmarketshare can be the reason. China has about 22% of internet users according to CIA. Is there a way to estimate how many are counted by Netmarketshare?

potatosoup 10y ago

OS X Sierra (10.12) adoption chart https://www.gosquared.com/global/mac/sierra/#beta https://www.gosquared.com/global/mac/sierra/#beta Looks like people are split 30/30/30 between the last three versions with many holdouts. Things look way better in iOS land (76% on latest version): https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/ https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/

jcoffland 10y ago

Here are some other OS usage stats. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp http://cdn1b.static.pornhub.phncdn.com/insights-static//wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4-pornhub-insights-2016-year-review-operating-system.png http://cdn1b.static.pornhub.phncdn.com/insights-static//wp-c...

galago 10y ago
I would like to see the PornHub numbers for desktop and mobile combined. That would give a better sense of what's going on. My guess for the consumer market is that it looks like Windows is in solid shape, but the reality is that people are spending more time on mobile devices, even if they have a PC somewhere in the house.
- bostand 10y ago
  Because pornhub stats are skewed towards services that ..ummm ... allow one handed use? Wouldn't that affect iPhone 7 vs 7+ numbers?
- galago 10y ago
  My comment wasn't specific to pornography. I think its generally understood that home browsing is moving off desktops.
  - michaelmrose 10y ago
    Do you mean more people are getting laptops or that people are moving off laptops/desktops to mobile devices?

yetanotherme 10y ago

https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qpcustom=FreeBSD&qpcustomb=0 https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qp... They need more decimal points to explain it

phkamp 10y ago

"desktop" is a totally useless and nonsensical classification, when they do not (which is obvious from their numbers) count laptops plugged into a screen & keyboard for the duration of a workday as a "desktop".

coldtea 10y ago
Nonsensical? Laptops/desktop are a form factor / product category, not a usage pattern. The same way as 20kg desktop PC on boats are not "laptops". Sometimes you do need to know how its used (e.g. if you sell peripherals that only make sense for "road warriors" you will want to know how many use their machines at a specific location all day, regardless of form factor), but most of the time, laptop/desktop distinction based on form, like the one we always been using, makes far more sense.

sureshn 10y ago

With 88.67% of desktop OS being different flavors of microsoft OS, it seems a bit overwhelming that its still that high , especially after a massive acceptance of ubuntu. Its shocking that Apple has failed to make inroads in any other country outside the USA. One wonders why it never crossed their minds. This gives Microsoft a great opportunity to win back this big iPhone using crowd by making their Apps platform independent which they are doing already. I see Microsoft coming back big time like the windows 98 , 2000 and VB 6.0 kind of good times awaits them now :)

goodcanadian 10y ago
Two thoughts come to mind: 1) If Microsoft is already/still at ~90%, is there really room for a big time come back? Getting the rest of the market is small potatoes compared to what they already have. 2) How much of the market does desktop represent, anyway? Most people I know do not own a desktop. They may have a laptop, but they may also only have a tablet and/or phone. Now, I believe you are actually suggesting that Microsoft can leverage their desktop market to get back into tablets and phones, but I don't know . . . so far, their efforts have been disappointing, and frankly, people are used to their Android devices, so Microsoft will actually be the weird phone even if it is the normal desktop.
- deleted 10y ago
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- michaelmrose 10y ago
  Desktop is synonymous with laptop/desktop machine in fact it is actually difficult to separate the two. I think this is the case here.
- deleted 10y ago
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- pjmlp 10y ago
  Here in Germany most consumer store chains have replaced hybrid Android tablets and netbooks with Windows 10 versions. Many of those devices do allow for a SIM card as well.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

You have to love the big spike in Windows 98 usage in Feb '16 (https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qpcustom=Windows+98&qpcustomb=0 https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qp...)

PetahNZ 10y ago
That big jump from 0.01% to 0.01%

gmuslera 10y ago

Last months saw an example of a distributed database/api service scraping, using hundreds of thousands of IPs of around the world, and random user agents (I think that all started with Mozilla/5.0, but the rest were from random historical user agents), to avoid rate limits. The OSs referenced in those user agents went back to early windows versions, OS/2 Warp and Maemo (to put 2 examples that hurt knowing that were fake). If this site take as base sites/URLs that are somewhat hit by that kind of traffic the stats could be very misleading.

herbst 10y ago
Yeah. Where is "vitaly rules" in this graph? I have medium sizes sites where that is 2-7% of the traffic right now.

sogen 10y ago

This is a duplicate from a couple days ago

yabatopia 10y ago

Are there somewhere market share statistics available for desktop and mobile operating systems combined? The separation between desktop and mobile devices feels a bit outdated. How does Windows relate to Android or iOS, for example?

fergie 10y ago

Can OSX plus Linux combined really be below 7%? If so, I live in a freaky bubble.

erelde 10y ago
Windows must have at least half of its share from corporate clients. It's about the only desktop OS used in a corporate environment.
MagnumOpus 10y ago
If you are browsing HN, you likely live and work in a bubble with massive over-representation of the very rich (who buy Macs disproportionately) and the IT tinkerers (who use Linux disproportionately). (This is the case even for the US, but even more so worldwide, where a Macbook costs a month's gross salary rather than a week's worth.)

konficker 10y ago

Hate to be pedantic but Linux is not an operating system.