Windows 7 and Google Chrome : A winning pair for 2010

According to Net Applications web statistics, the Windows 7 operating system and Google Chrome browser have started 2010 strongly.

Using the announcement of their 2009 second semester results, Microsoft pointed out the excellent sales of their Windows 7 operating system with more then 60 million licenses sold, quantifying that this "operating system is the fastest selling in history".

While indications are that the general public uptake of Windows 7 is good, it appears that enterprises are awaiting the release of the first Service Pack before jumping onboard. Despite the recommendations of some research groups that the availability of SP1 isn’t a requirement for migration planning, the professional environment has visibility decided that they would rather remain cautious. Microsoft concedes that sales numbers of Windows 7 to professionals are below that seen with the general public.


But what does the Web think?
Besides Microsoft’s statements, the web is often a good indicator of public opinion. Net Application’s global statistics reveal that through the end of January Windows 7 now controls more then 10% of the market share. This peak was taken on the 31st of January 2010, a Sunday.

During January, we can note that Windows 7 had greater use on weekends rather then during the week. This usage pattern would confirm that Windows 7 has had greater uptake among home users rather then professionals.

The average market share reported by Windows 7 systems throughout January came in at 7.5%, in third place being Windows Vista (17.4 %). The most widely used operating system among internet users remained Windows XP with 66.3% though, with growth in the Windows family being seen in Windows 7.

While potential winners for 2010 should start to appear as the year progresses, another name that comes to mind besides Windows 7 is the Google Chrome browser. For Net Applications, Google Chrome managed to increase market share over the month of January to the detriment of Internet Explorer and Firefox. Google Chrome’s average market share is around 5.20%, placing it in third place as the most widely used web browser in the world behind Firefox (24.4%) and Internet Explorer (62.2%).

In the Internet Explorer family, we notice that IE8 has dethroned IE6, no doubt due to the recent security fault which was exploited in Internet Explorer 6, with Microsoft recommending that users migrate to version 8.

Getting reliable statistics for web browsers has been made more difficult with the recent release of Firefox 3.6 and Google Chrome 4.0 (for Windows), while it can probably be assumed that the latest release of Google Chrome picked a few users curiosity.