and the winner is...

WINDOWS 7 WIN, MAC OS LOSSES JULY BATTLE FOR SHARE

v

Microsoft's Windows 7 reached a major milestone in July, while Apple's Mac OS X lost ground for the fourth straight month, a Web analytics firm said Sunday.

According to California-based Net Applications, Windows 7 passed Vista for the first time last month by posting a usage share of 14.5%, versus its predecessor's 14.3%.


Net Applications uses data acquired from the 160 million unique visitors who browse the 40,000 Web sites it monitors for clients.

Windows 7 has been on a fast pace to supplant Vista as Microsoft's -- and the world's -- No. 2 operating system, behind the nearly-nine-year-old Windows XP. By Net Applications' calculation, Windows 7 needed just nine months to hit a mark that Vista took more than 21 months to match.


Vista's share crested at 18.8% in October 2009 and has been in decline since: Vista has lost 4.5 percentage points, or 24% of its peak share, since Microsoft launched Windows 7.


Microsoft has not been shy about flaunting Windows 7's success, calling it the firm's fastest-selling operating system with more than 175 million licenses sold , and claiming that Windows 7 runs 16% of the world's personal computers.


Combined, all editions of Windows ran on 91.3% of the machines that connected to Net Applications' sites last month, a decline of just over one-tenth of a percentage point. Windows 7's growing use appears to have been key to that small slip and in a slowing of Windows' gradual decline: In the second quarter of 2010, Windows lost only one-fourth as much share as it did during the first quarter.



Meanwhile, Net Applications reported that Apple's OS X recorded its fourth consecutive month of share decline in July, losing nearly two-tenths of a percentage point, the largest single-month drop in over a year and a half.


Since the beginning of 2010, Mac OS X has lost share in five of seven months. It now stands at 5%, the same number as in February 2010 and off the operating system's peak of 5.3% in October 2009, the month Microsoft debuted Windows 7.




(Source: by Gregg Keizer, http://www.itnews.com)