Recent data from analytics company StatCounter shows that Windows 7 has obtained more than half of the worldwide operating system market for the first time. The OS surpassed Windows XP as the most popular choice globally in October 2011 but it wasn't until last month that it surpassed the 50 percent mark.
According to StatCounter, Windows Vista continues to hold the bronze medal for third place with 8.32 percent market share, although Mac OSX has been making a heavy push to capture this spot as of late, sitting at 7.05 percent at the end of June. If current trends continue, OSX will likely overtake Vista in the coming months.
Of course this is only one company's interpretation of stats, as Net Applications claims that Windows XP still holds a 43.61 percent share of the market. Their data indicated that XP is still the top dog, just barely edging out Windows 7 at 41.59 percent. Furthermore, Vista still holds a sizeable lead of 3.6 percent market share over OSX.
CNET highlights that despite launching nearly three years ago, Windows 7 has had a slower time achieving the same popularity as Windows XP. The main reason for this is that many businesses are still holding on to XP for dear life after seeing how bad Vista was. XP is generally considered to be stable and custom business applications built for the platform would likely need to be recoded to work on 7.
Microsoft will ending support for Windows XP in April 2014 and is encouraging legacy users to upgrade to Windows 7 ASAP.