Data Monday: Operating System Market Share

by November 9, 2009

Windows 7 was released at the end of October 2009 so an overview of operating system market share seems in order.

PC Operating Systems

  • In September 2009, Mac platforms had 5.12%, Windows had 92.77%, and Linux had 0.95% of operating system market share. (source)
  • Between October and September, Windows dropped 0.25 percentage points (from 92.77% to 92.52%), Mac OS climbed up a sizeable 0.15 percentage points (from 5.12% to 5.27%), and Linux edged forward 0.01 percentage points (from 0.95% to 0.96%). (source)
  • Total Windows PC unit sales jumped 49 percent year-over-year for the week that Windows 7 launched and 95 percent from the week prior to launch. (source)
  • Windows 7 has already captured a larger percentage of the OS market than Apple's OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Linux. (source)
  • PC sales growth during the week of the Vista launch jumped 68 percent over the prior year's sales and 170 percent over the week preceding the launch. Windows PC sales for the launch week of Windows 7 were down 6 percent compared to PC sales during the Vista launch week. (source)
  • One month after launch, more than a sixth of all Macs were running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. (source)

Mobile Operating Systems

  • Symbian has a 46.2% share of the global smartphone OS market in the third quarter of 2009, although it only grew that share 2.6 percent year-on-year. (source)
  • RIM grew its market share by over 40% year-on-year to take 20.6% of the overall smartphone OS market in the third quarter of 2009. (source)
  • iPhone grabbed 17.8% percent of the global smartphone OS market, up 6.7 percent compared to 2008. (source)
  • Microsoft has 8.8% of the global smartphone OS market, down 33.1%. (source)
  • The iPhone's worldwide market share jumped from 33% to 40% over February to August 2009. (source)
  • Google's Android OS picked up a 7% market share by August versus only 2% in February 2009. (source)
  • Palm's WebOS had a 4% slice of the smartphone market in August 2009. (source)
  • The global share for Nokia's Symbian OS fell from 43% in February to 34% in August 2009. (source)
  • Microsoft's Windows Mobile also lost share, falling from 7% in February to 4% in August 2009. (source)