14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 10 arrived on July 29 as a free upgrade for Windows 7 and 8.1, so it was only natural to expect the market share of these two operating systems to be impacted by the launch of a new version.
Windows 7 was, is, and will continue to be the world's number one desktop operating system, with more than one in two PCs in the world currently running this particular version. Obviously, Microsoft not only hopes but also expects Windows 10 to overtake Windows 7 sometime in the future and help make the transition easier when support for the OS launched in 2009 comes to an end, in approximately 4 years.
But has Windows 7 been impacted by the arrival of Windows 10 in any way? The new OS has been around for nearly 3 months, so we should already be able to tell whether Microsoft's plan has any chance of happening or not.
Statistics provided by market researcher Net Applications show that Windows 7 is currently running on 55.71 percent of the world's computers, which is undoubtedly really impressive because more than half of our PCs are powered by this version.
The post-Windows 10 performance
Back in July, when Windows 10 made its debut, Windows 7 was at 60.73 percent, and since then, it started losing users, mostly thanks to the free upgrade offer we've already told you about. Windows 7 declined gradually to 57.67 percent in August, 56.53 percent in September, and 55.71 percent in October, but it's not all as bad as it seems.
Basically, the 5 percent drop that Windows 7 has experienced was pretty much expected, given the fact that Windows 10 is available completely free of charge, but it's also worth mentioning that, even with this loss, the operating system is now at almost the same level as in January 2015 (55.92 percent).
The evolution of a desktop operating system, however, is full of ups and downs, so while it's losing users these days, it could very well go back up once again in case some decide to give up on Windows 10 and return to Windows 7. An option to downgrade is available to Windows 10 customers 30 days after the install, so don't be too surprised if Windows 7 actually gains users in the coming months.