Windows 7 jumps ahead of Vista globally

BOSTON, USA: In just over a year since its release to manufacturer (RTM), Windows 7 has overtaken Windows Vista for the first time in total market share worldwide according to web analytics firm, StatCounter.

The firm's research arm StatCounter Global Stats reports that, in August, Windows 7 took 19.4 percent total market share, compared to Vista's 17.7 percent worldwide. XP continues to dominate the global market with 55.4 percent

StatCounter specialises in website traffic analysis and provides free lifetime stats and free detailed analysis on the latest 500 hits. It recently announced a major upgrade which increased the log quotas to its paying members by a minimum of 100percent at no extra cost.

Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter commented, "Africa, Asia and South America are driving the increased market share for Windows 7. Although there has been extremely good growth for Windows 7 in Europe and North America, it has yet to overtake Vista in these regions."

Vista continues to outperform Windows 7 in North America with a market share of 24.7 percent compared to 20.7 percent for Windows 7 (Windows XP 40.6 percent). In Europe the gap is even closer with 22.7 percent for Vista compared to 21.9 percent for Windows 7 (XP 47.5 percent).

Aodhan Cullen added, "The installed base of Windows Vista was very low in Africa, Asia and South America and now users in these regions are upgrading straight from Windows XP to Windows 7 giving rise to this leap in market share."

The data is based on an analysis of 15 billion page views for August 2010 collected from the StatCounter network of over three million websites.