Operating system marketshare data gathered by Net Applications shows that for the first time in many years, Windows XP is no longer world's most popular desktop operating system. Windows 7's marketshare hit 42.76 percent in August, while Windows XP's marketshare fell to 42.5 percent.
Windows Vista holds on to a marketshare of 6.1 percent and 0.23 percent of PC users are using a pre-release version of the upcoming Windows 8 operating system. Another interesting observation is that Apple's marketshare now exceeds that of Windows Vista, the combined share of the different OS X versions adds up to 7.11 percent.
Microsoft has seen Windows 7's share rise by roughly 1 percentage point month-on-month for around the past year -- about the same level of decline seen in Windows XP -- while Vista's share has remained static at around 6 percent over the past quarter.
Not all web tracking companies agree on when Windows 7 became the dominant OS: StatCounter reported Windows 7 overtaking XP almost a year ago, and now puts Windows 7's overall market share at over the 50 percent mark.
