BOSTON, USA: Windows 7 has had an encouraging start in the US and globally according to web analytics firm, StatCounter.

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The firm's research arm StatCounter Global Stats reports that Windows 7 weekly share went from 1.75 percent of the US market pre launch to 2.82 percent by the end of October. Globally too the news was positive for Microsoft with market share increasing to the same levels.

"Windows 7 has hit the ground running and the underlying trend is positive for Microsoft," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. "The new operating system should be further boosted by December holiday season sales of computers which will have Windows 7 preinstalled."

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He added that as expected it looks as if Windows 7 is taking market share from Vista and to a lesser extent XP. "In the US Vista has declined from 35.78 percent to 34.52 percent at the end of October. XP has seen a smaller fall from 48.92 percent to 48.47 percent."

He added that one factor is clear from the analysis. "Apple Mac fans remain unimpressed by the global launch hype. Mac OS X grew over the same period in the US from 11.29 percent to 11.87 percent."

Data is based on an analysis of 4.7 billion page views (1.1 billion from the US) which were collected during the three week period 12th October to the 1st November 2009 from the StatCounter network of over three million websites.

StatCounter, which provides free website traffic analysis, is one of the largest web analytics firms in the world monitoring in excess of ten billion pageloads per month.