Microsoft is soon to release the 8th version of they're flagship operating system Windows, which has dominated the desktop world for 3 decades. Microsoft achieved this by licensing the OS to multiple hardware vendors to release with their products. As opposed to Apple which likes to keep they're hardware and software tightly integrated.As a result, Microsoft enjoyed a 90% market share for Windows while Apple and Linux carved up what was left.
However, as mobile operating systems become increasingly more popular, Apple, Microsoft and Google are starting to merge them with Desktop products which will completely change the landscape going forward. This trend is already becoming evident with the release of Android 5.0 (Jelly Bean), OSX Mountain Lion and Windows 8, where all three versions can now interact with your desktop system in some form. It's sheer computing convergence at it's best!
Despite the growth of mobile platforms, Windows remains the number one operating system by a long shot, according to data from comScore.
The chart below shows the share of platforms driving traffic to websites in the U.S. It's not a perfect measure of which platform is the most used, but it's a good short hand representation since most users surf the web with each operating system.
While Windows remains dominant, it's becoming less important. Over the last six months, it lost a few percentage points to iOS, as you can see.
Again, stepping back further, six years ago it controlled 90% of the market. And there doesn't seem to be any reason to believe Windows is going to reverse the trend anytime soon. Especially if the new Metro UI becomes a hit...
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