Windows 8 gains market share in December
Macs take a slight dip in global market share as Windows 8 climbs higher in its second month of availability.
Despite a mixed reaction to its arrival at the end of October, Windows 8 continued to grow in market share by the end of December 2012.
New desktop market share numbers released by Net Applications show that Windows 8 jumped from 1.06 percent market share at the end of its first full month on the market to 1.77 percent by the end of December. That's a month-to-month jump of almost 60 percent. Note that these numbers include Windows 8 and Windows 8 on touch screens, but not Windows RT.
For what it's worth, the feature-limited Windows RT claimed 0.01 percent of global market share during the same time period. However, CNET sister site ZDNET also noted that the Surface RT is the most popular single device running either Windows 8 or Windows RT. This isn't a surprise, though, as none of the new Windows 8 or Windows RT devices has gotten the singular push that the Surface RT has.
Other market share shifts included a slight decrease for Macs, a bump for Windows 7. Most importantly for Microsoft, this is the first time since February 2012 that overall Windows market share has seen an uptick, from 91.45 percent to 91.74 percent.