Communication

Windows by the numbers, May 2020

Windows resumed a more-or-less normal pattern in May as Windows 7 shed share while Windows 10 added to its account, bucking the March-April trend where roles had flipped – perhaps because of businesses and governments urging people to work at home during the coronavirus pandemic.

According to analytics company Net Applications, Windows 10 grew by 1.8 percentage points to reach 57.8% of global OS share last month, representing 66.7% of all flavors of Windows. Both of those numbers were records for Windows 10, with the latter marking the first time that the operating system accounted for two-thirds of all existent Windows.

Windows 10’s percentage of only Windows PCs was significantly larger than the percentage of all personal computers because Windows does not power every system. In May, Windows was the OS of 86.7% of the world’s personal computers, a decrease of two-tenths of a percentage point and a new low for Microsoft’s operating system. Of the rest, all but a miniscule six-hundredths of a point ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS, in decreasing order.

At the same time, Windows 7, whose long-term decline stalled in March and only half-heartedly resumed in April, picked up the downward pace, losing 1.3 percentage points to slip to 24.3% of all PCs. When expressed as a portion of just Windows, Windows 7 fell by the same amount, ending at 28% for May.

Windows 8/8.1 dipped to 3.5% of all operating systems and to 4.1% of only Windows, losing three-tenths of a point in both measurements.

A pandemic rebound for 10?

The restart of Windows share normalcy – Windows 7 down, 10 up – was difficult to explain in the face of the pandemic situation of May. Although some parts of the U.S. slowly retreated from the stay-home/work-at-home mandates of the months before, in most cases large businesses and organizations continued to stress remote work. It’s hard to see how large migrations from 7 to 10 could be conducted in that environment.

One possible explanation: Industry analysts at Gartner said, “[the] work from home trend saved [the] PC market from collapse [in the first five months of 2020]” because “COVID-19 forced businesses and schools to enable millions of people to work from home and increase spending on new notebooks, Chromebooks and tablets for those workers.”

Since new PCs ship with Windows 10, it’s possible, if Gartner is correct, that company-and-school efforts to equip workers, students and staff with remote-capable devices caused the uptick in 10 and a corresponding decline in 7.

Possible? Sure. Likely? Hard to say.

The changes of May also shifted the Computerworld forecast – based on the 12-month average – for Windows 7 and 10. The former should slide below 20% of just Windows not long after 2020’s end and a year from now, dip to around 15%. Meanwhile, Windows 10 will pass 70% (of Windows only) by the end of August, and within a year, reach 80%, perhaps 82%.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ OS data, May saw another unexplained advance by Linux. The category, which lumps together all distributions, scratched out another three-tenths of a percentage point to hit 3.2%, its second highest ever. (The record holder was the suspicious 3.4% in August 2017, just months before Net Applications purged bogus traffic originating from criminals’ “bots” and rejiggered virtually everything.)

The declines of both Windows (two-tenths of a point) and macOS (one-tenth) fed the boost to Linux (three-tenths), showing the zero-sum nature of share; when one operating system slumps, another has to shinny up.

Of the overall Linux, Ubuntu again led the way, accounting for more than two-thirds of the three-tenths of a point increase.

It remained puzzling why Linux experienced a growth spurt and more specifically, why now? Frankly, Computerworld has no reasonable answer.

Net Applications calculates operating system share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers used to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions to measure operating system activity.

Windows by the numbers, April 2020

Windows’ share of all operating systems took a tumble in April, the first full month that corporate and government officials urged people to stay at home and work there if possible, as the coronavirus pandemic surged.

According to analytics company Net Applications, Windows accounted for 86.9% of global OS share in April, a decline of 2.3 percentage points. That was the largest loss by Windows since November 2017, when Net Applications made major adjustments to its numbers after purging its data of bogus traffic originating from criminals’ “bots.”

The decline of Windows overall had a ripple effect, causing individual editions, such as Windows 10, to have similarly large losses. When measured as a portion of all Windows, however, the editions’ declines, if present at all, were much less significant.

And because operating system share is zero-sum – when one OS goes down, another has to go up – April saw major advances by two non-Microsoft operating systems. Apple’s macOS climbed by eight-tenths of a percentage point, reaching 9.8%, its highest mark since March 2019. And Linux – all distributions – shot up by a remarkable 1.5 points to end April at 2.9%, its highest mark since October 2017 (and just before the Net Applications data revamp).

Although the macOS increase was understandable, perhaps triggered by people using personal Macs while working from home rather than on a corporate-owned Windows machine, the big uptick in Linux was puzzling. Did every IT professional boot up an at-home Linux box to remotely manage his or her employer’s endpoints, servers and network? Or was the number a Net Applications counting error or an artifact of its weighting system?

One suspect that immediately jumped out from the data was Ubuntu, which Net Applications pegged at a whopping 1.9% during April (or 66% of the Linux total), a gigantic increase from the three-tenths of a percentage point the month prior (and the three-tenths of a point in February, too). That there were suddenly millions more machines running the Canonical distribution in April than in March seemed unlikely, to say the least. Net Applications may have miscounted.

Windows 10’s share went up, not down

Even though Windows’ overall share slid, the impact on individual editions was minor.

Windows 10 recorded a drop of 1.3 percentage points, falling to 56.1% of all personal computer operating systems. But for Computerworld‘s money, the more accurate number has always been the share of Windows only. For Windows 10, that actually climbed in April, ending up two-tenths of a percentage point at 64.5%.

(Remember, Windows 10’s percentage of only Windows PCs is larger than the percentage of all personal computers because Windows does not power every system. While Windows overall fell and Windows 10 did, too, the latter didn’t slip as much as the former and so – counterintuitively – Windows 10’s portion of Windows went up, not down. (The pot got smaller but Windows 10’s part of that pot didn’t shrink as much, if that makes sense.)

At the same time, Windows 7, whose decline seemed to stall in March, apparently resumed its descent as, presumably, users left that older OS for 10. At first glance, Net Applications’ numbers reported as much, with Windows 7 down six-tenths of a point to 25.6% of all personal computers. But when expressed as a fraction of just Windows, Windows 7 didn’t budge, remaining at 29.4% for April.

Windows 8/8.1, the only other editions with enough share to matter, dropped to 3.8% of all operating systems and to 4.4% of only Windows, losing four-tenths of a point of the latter.

In all, Windows’ various versions had some movement in April, but not much. Computerworld posits that stay-at-home, work-at-home guidelines again put pause to any further migrations from Windows 7 to Windows 10, or at least those of any material size.

Net Applications calculates operating system share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers used to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions to measure operating system activity.

Windows by the numbers, March 2020

Windows 10’s share remained flat in March, though users had an excuse for pausing migrations: the raging COVID-19 pandemic.

According to metrics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10 accounted for 57.3% of global OS share last month and represented 64.3% of the various flavors of Windows powering PCs. Although the former was near a tie with the month prior, the latter – a better indication of Windows 10’s success in convincing users to upgrade – was significantly lower than February’s 65.1%.

Windows 10’s percentage of only Windows PCs was larger than the percentage of all personal computers because Windows did not power every system. In March, Windows was the OS of 89.2% of the world’s personal computers – an increase of a full point. Of the rest, all but a tiny fraction ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS, in decreasing order.

A March increase in Windows overall share was the cause of Windows 10’s decrease when calculated as a portion of just Windows. (Windows 10’s part of the pot didn’t get larger in March, but the pot itself did.)

The stabilization of Windows 10’s share, following February’s very minor uptick, has altered the forecast for the operating system. All signs point now toward a significantly slower uptake.

Rather than reaching 75% by September and nearly 80% by the end of 2020 – numbers from last month’s prediction – Windows 10 now looks like it won’t make those marks until January 2021 and May 2021, respectively.

It’s impossible to know with any certainty, of course, but the pandemic and its countless disruptions of normality, from business closures to workers trying to keep things running from home, has to have put the kibosh on migrating from Windows 7 to Windows 10. With everything in such flux, if not downright chaos, it’s easy to believe that many have decided that now isn’t the time for anything but the most critical tasks.

And a Windows 7-to-Windows 10 upgrade, even when the former has had its security updates terminated, no longer deserves a spot on that task list.

Windows 7 stays strong

As Windows 10 moved nary a whit, Windows 7 actually grew its share during March.

Net Applications pegged Windows 7 at 26.2% of all desktop operating systems, up a percentage point from February. As a portion of only Windows, the 2009 OS was estimated at 29.4%, a gain of eight-tenths of a point over the month prior. The increases were the largest since September 2019.

The numbers don’t mean that 12 million or so PCs magically reverted to Windows 7, transformed from Windows 10 as part of some secret rollback. Instead, the Net Applications’ data, which measured activity, may have simply signaled that many dusted off their older, largely unused personal PCs when they were told by employers to head home and work – or try to work – from there.

If that speculation has some factual basis, Net Applications should continue to report a steadfastness by Windows 7 as those machines are pressed into service through the COVID-19 crisis. In turn, Microsoft might be pressed by customers, including its very important commercial, enterprise-sized customers, to restore security updates to Windows 7 for, perhaps, the duration of the pandemic.

Microsoft already produces those updates for its corporate Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, which for a fee has provided companies fixes for vulnerabilities tagged as “Critical” or “Important” during both February and March. The Redmond, Wash. developer could deliver these patches to every Windows 7 PC – again, as long as the work-at-home mandates last – and compensate paying customers by extending the updates by as many months.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ data, Windows 8/8.1 bumped up one-tenth of a percentage point, ending March at a 4.2% share of all personal computers but 4.8% of those running Windows. Meanwhile, macOS sloughed off half a percentage point last month, powering 8.9% of all personal computers. It was the first time since July 2019 that Apple’s operating system slumped below 9% and its lowest mark in two and a half years.

Net Applications calculates operating system share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers used to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions to measure operating system activity.

Windows by the numbers, February 2020

Windows 7 users who missed the operating system’s mid-January support deadline weren’t in any hurry last month to dump the operating system.

According to data published Sunday by American analytics company Net Applications, Windows 7 shed just four-tenths of a percentage point in February, ending the month at 25.2%. Windows 7 accounted for 28.6% of the personal computers running the Microsoft OS.

(The percentage of Windows PCs is larger than the percentage of all personal computers because Windows does not power every system. In February, Windows was the OS of 88.2% of the world’s personal computers — an increase of just one-tenth of a point. Of the rest, all but a tiny fraction ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS, in decreasing order.)

February’s decline of Windows 7 was less than a tenth that of January’s, when procrastinators scrambled to retire the 2009 OS before – or shortly after – its Jan. 14 end of support.

Users of Windows 7 who didn’t make the switch to a newer OS may have decided that, having blown the deadline without visible harm, they could relax and keep running the operating system. Or perhaps the last-minute rush in January had exhausted IT’s resources and administrators were simply pausing to regroup before tackling more machines.

Another possibility: The Extended Security Updates (ESP) that Microsoft has sold – and continues to sell – have dampened at least some of the immediate enthusiasm for ditching Windows 7.

Six years ago, when Windows XP exited support in April 2014, Net Applications recorded a similar slowdown in XP’s decline. At that time, however, XP’s share continued to sink for a month (May 2014) before completely stalling the month after that (June).

Windows 10 on its way to 100%

At least the when-Windows-7-falls-Windows-10-climbs rule remained intact last month: Windows 10’s share rose three-tenths of a percentage point to 57.4% of all personal computers and 65.1% of only those running Windows.

The forecast based on the latest data – the average change over the past 12 months – now predicts that Windows 10 will reach 75% of all Windows systems by September and nearly 80% by the end of 2020. Those users must come from somewhere: Windows 7 should shrink to 19.7% by September and just 16% by Dec. 31.

Unless Microsoft forks Windows 10 in some fashion – Windows 10X, perhaps? – and so offers more than the purportedly “last” version of its client OS, Windows 10 will, at some point, account for 100% of all Windows. Unlike previous major migrations, like XP-to-7, this time there’s no successor to 10 that will dilute its dominance.

According to Computerworld‘s forecast, Windows 10 should represent somewhat more than 97% of all Windows by the end of 2021.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ data, Windows 8/8.1 added one-tenth of a percentage point, ending February at 4.1% share of all personal computers but 4.7% of those running Windows. The increase was the third straight for the not-yet-obsolete OS; there’s no easy explanation for that climb, short as it has been (three-tenths of a point over the three months). It’s unlikely folk actually flocked to Windows 8.1 since Dec. 1, 2019, so the increase should be written off as an artifact of Net Applications’ data collection methodologies.

Meanwhile, macOS shed three-tenths of a percentage point to end February at 9.4%. Apple’s OS took a tumble last month as well, although that was by Net Applications’ design; the metrics vendor had counted iPads running iPadOS 13 as Macs, and so had overestimated the share of macOS.

A major correction in January that went back to September 2019 put things straight. On the plus side, macOS remained within sight of the 10% milestone, which it had erroneously met last fall.

Net Applications calculates operating system share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers used to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions to measure operating system activity.

Windows by the numbers: January 2020

Windows 10 in January posted its second-largest single-month increase in user share, when its works-for-business forerunner, Windows 7, exhausted its free support.

According to data published Saturday by web metrics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10 added 3.7 percentage points last month – almost twice the increase of the month before – to end January at 57.1%, a record high. Windows 10’s portion of the user share of just Windows PCs climbed almost two points, to 64.8%.

(The percentage of Windows PCs is larger than the percentage of all personal computers because Windows does not power every desktop and laptop. In January, Windows was the OS of 88.1% of the world’s personal computers – a significant increase; more on that later. Of the remainder, all but a small fraction ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS, in decreasing order.)

Microsoft retired Windows 7 three weeks ago, on Jan. 14. Although the Redmond, Wash. firm delivered the final general security updates to customers then, businesses can purchase post-retirement patches through the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program.

Windows 7 plummets to equal XP’s at-expiration share

The now-retired Windows 7 finished January – and its allotted half-a-score – with a 25.6% share of all personal computers, down a whopping 4 percentage points (also the second-largest decline ever in one month), and at 29% flat for those systems running some kind of Windows.

That decline was the largest since August 2016 and depressed Windows 7 to the same share Windows XP had when it wrapped up its long run in April 2104. Warnings by Computerworld that a greater portion of Windows 7 would remain at its retirement were ultimately unfounded.

Those warnings were based on forecasts cranked out with the average of the most recent 12 months. In for a penny, in for a pound: The latest prediction pegs Windows 7 declining by more than a point each month, meaning the OS should slide under the 20% of all Windows PCs bar in September, dip further – to around 17% – by the end of the year.

There’s little reason to question those dates: Windows XP did the same, falling below 20% of all Windows PCs eight months after its retirement, nearing 18% three months after that.

By those same milestones – September and December – Windows 10 should account for 76% and 80%, respectively. Those numbers may seem unreasonable, but because Windows 10 won’t be sharing share with any follow-up, as have earlier editions of the client software, it’s certain that the OS will ultimately own all of Windows on the desktop.

Speaking of all of Windows, elsewhere in Net Applications’ data, Windows 8/8.1 added one-tenth of a percentage point, climbing to a 4% share. A year from now, the OS flop will have slid to 2.8%. (Side note: Windows 8.1 retains support until Jan. 10, 2023.)

Net Applications miscounts, scrambles numbers for September-December

Apple’s macOS has been making inroads the last few months, chewing up some of Windows’ share. Or so Net Applications’ data was saying.

Wrong.

“Due to changes made to the user agent in iPadOS 13, iPads were identified as macOS devices,” the California metrics vendor wrote on its website. “This change propagated progressively from September to December and required an adjustment to the data in that timeframe.”

By miscounting iPads running iPadOS 13 as Macs, Net Applications overestimated the share of macOS. The differences between the contemporaneous shares and those adjusted to remove the iPadOS data was substantial. In December, for instance, Net Applications had pegged macOS’ user share as 11.1%; that month’s adjusted share now? 9.2%.

From September to November, macOS’ adjusted shares were similarly lower than the originals. November’s 11.6% (reported at the time) fell to 9.7% (adjusted by eliminating iPadOS); October’s 11% became 9.2%; and September’s 11.6% sunk to 9.4%.

In January, macOS added six-tenths of a percentage point to climb to 9.7%.

And because share was zero-sum, never more than, never less 100%, when macOS was incorrectly boosted, Windows had to take a hit. Adjusting macOS downward by dumping iPadOS, then, raised Windows’ total. For December, Windows went from 86.8% (as originally reported) to 88.7% (after adjustment); in November climbed from 86.1% to 87.7%; for October changed from 86.8% to 88.5%; and in September, went from 86% to 87.8%.

During January, Windows slumped six-tenths of a percentage point, to 88.1%.

The screw-up over iPadOS, which in turn reported erroneous numbers for both macOS and Windows, necessitated adjustments in the individual Windows versions, too. (The increased total had to come from somewhere.) The new figures, for example, showed that Windows 10 had surged in October (+2.7 points), rose slightly and stayed flat in November and December, respectively, before shooting up in January.

Net Applications calculates operating system share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions to measure operating system activity.

Windows by the numbers: December 2019

Microsoft’s users last month resumed purging their PCs of Windows 7, but as the operating system’s retirement countdown neared single-digit days, it still powered hundreds of millions of machines worldwide.

According to data published Wednesday by web analytics company Net Applications, Windows 7’s December share of all personal computers slipped by two-tenths of a percentage point – a small difference from a flat November – to end the year at 26.6%. Windows 7’s portion of the user share of just Windows PCs fell four-tenths of a point, to 30.8%.

(The percentage of Windows PCs is larger than the percentage of all personal computers because Windows does not run every desktop and laptop. In December, Windows powered 86.8% of the world’s personal computers (an increase of seven-tenths of a percentage point). Of the remainder, all but a tiny fraction ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS, in that order of decreasing popularity.)

Typically, Windows 7 and its successor, Windows 10, are in equilibrium: As one falls, the other climbs by about the same amount. December was different, due in part to the increase in Windows overall. While Windows 7 slumped by just a tad, Windows 10 jumped. The latter’s share closed the month at 54.6% of all PCs, up 1.3 points. Windows 10 accounted for 63% of the desktop and notebook systems running Windows, a record.

Microsoft will retire Windows 7 on Jan. 14, or in a week and a half. The Redmond, Wash. firm will deliver the final security updates to customers on that date, although businesses can purchase post-retirement patches through the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program.

Windows 7’s hourglass running out of sand

Windows 7, close enough to its expiration date to smell the grave, will continue to power devices for years to come if the past is any kind of predictor.

Windows 7’s complete pause in November and the lackadaisical decline of December means that Computerworld‘s forecast of future changes – based on the latest 12-month average – has again morphed. According to that prediction, Windows 7 will be running 29.7% of all Windows PCs on Jan. 31, two weeks after its official retirement. If that fraction doesn’t seem significant, 446 million should; that’s the estimated number of Windows 7 PCs represented by the 29.7%. A lot of systems will continue to rely on Windows 7 after Microsoft shoves it into retirement.

A year from now – on Jan. 1, 2021 – Windows 7 should account for a still-major 18.7% of all Windows (or approximately 281 million machines). Meanwhile, Windows 10 will be on 80% of Windows devices. That still wouldn’t match Windows XP at its height. In February 2007, as far back as Computerworld‘s records go for Net Applications’ numbers, XP powered an astounding 90.6% of all Windows.

Windows XP, which was officially retired in April 2014, more than half a decade ago, still runs 20 million or so PCs worldwide. Its share, which dropped by seven-tenths of a percentage point to 1.2% in December, has been on a very slow decline. The last time it knew double digits was July 2016; it’s spent the intervening years dwindling from 10% to its current level. Expect Windows 7 to mimic that (at the worst) or – more likely – remain viable much longer than XP, as the holdouts reject the radical servicing model of Windows 10 as long as they can.

(The Windows 7 numbers from Net Applications will almost certainly be an undercount, at least until the three-year ESU program ends, because the metrics company, like any which measure Internet traffic, cannot detect only-inside-the-enterprise PCs.)

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ numbers, Windows 8/8.1 mysteriously added four-tenths of a percentage point to its user share last month, reaching 4.3%. The increase has to be a measurement gone awry, as the operating system has been shrinking more or less steadily since Windows 10 appeared in 2015. (Side note: 8/8.1 has to go down in Windows history-so-far as the century’s flop. It topped out around 16%, a fifth less than the more spectacular debacle that was Vista.)

Meanwhile, macOS lost half a percentage point in December, slumping to 11.1%.

Net Applications calculates operating system share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions to measure browser activity.

IDG/Gregg Keizer

Windows by the numbers: November 2019

Microsoft customers last month pressed “pause” in their migrations from Windows 7 to Windows 10 as the adoption of the latter stalled for the first time since February.

According to data published Sunday by analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10’s share of all personal computers slumped a full percentage point – breaking a string of four straight months of gains of a point or more – to end November with 53.3%. Windows 10’s portion of the user share of all Windows PCs fell seven-tenths of a point, to 62%.

(The percentage of Windows PCs (62%) is larger than the percentage of all personal computers (53.3%) because Windows does not run every desktop and notebook. In November, Windows powered 86.1% of the world’s personal computers. Of the remainder, all but a quarter of one percent ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS, with Apple’s operating system the largest, by far, of those.)

Usually, Windows 10 and its most popular forerunner, Windows 7, are in equilibrium: As one falls the other climbs. November was different, as Windows 7 stayed flat while 10 dropped. Windows 7’s share closed the month at 26.9% of all PCs and 31.2% of those powered by Windows. Windows 7’s change last month was the smallest since June and ended a four-month series of massive declines that totaled 8.5 points.

The sudden slowdown in transfer of share from Windows 7 to Windows 10 may have come out of the blue, but perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise. After digging into the data archives, it turned out that Windows XP’s decline stalled substantially in the third-to-last month before its retirement. Five years ago, Windows XP’s user share of February 2014 increased by three-tenths of a percentage point as it counted down to a mid-April end of support.

Microsoft will retire Windows 7 on Jan. 14, or in six weeks. The Redmond, Wash. firm will deliver the final security updates to customers on that date, although businesses can purchase post-retirement patches through the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program.

By the time you read this, it’ll be (almost) too late

Windows 7 may be close to its expiration date but that doesn’t mean everyone will abide and scrub it from their machines. It will continue to power devices for months, years to come – even on machines that don’t receive post-termination patches via ESU.

The stubbornness of Windows 7 in November, whether a measurement anomaly or a reflection of an actual slowdown, means that Computerworld‘s forecast of future changes – based on the latest 12-month average – has to be altered yet again. By that prediction, Windows 7 will be running 27.8% of all Windows PCs on Jan. 31, 2020, two weeks after its official retirement. If that fraction, slightly more than one-fourth, doesn’t seem substantial, maybe 417,000,000 does; that’s the estimated number of Windows 7 PCs represented by the 27.8%. Any way one cuts it, a lot of systems will continue to rely on Windows 7 after Microsoft puts it, at least on paper, out to pasture.

A year later – Jan. 31, 2021 – Windows 7 should account for a still-significant 14% of all Windows (or approximately 210 million machines). Meanwhile, Windows 10 will be on a whopping 86.4% of Windows devices.

The latter statistic, if it indeed comes to pass, would be notable for moving Windows 10 nearer Windows XP in the global popularity contest. (Perhaps “popularity” would not be accurate, as that implies choice; ultimately, most Windows users didn’t choose 10, as desktop alternatives are, realistically and for the vast majority, only mirages.)

In February 2007 – as far back as Computerworld‘s records go for Net Applications’ data – Windows XP accounted for an amazing 90.6% of all Windows, a monopoly caused by five-and-a-half years of availability and the lack of a successor. (Windows Vista, XP’s designated follow-up, was seriously delayed and didn’t launch until near the end of 2007. XP’s predecessors, Windows 98 and Windows Me, had been retired by then or because they so stunk had been abandoned.)

Windows 10 will surpass Windows XP’s record in April 2021, according to Net Applications’ numbers, which point to 10 accounting for 90.7% of all Windows at the end of that month. That shouldn’t be much of a surprise: Windows 10 will be nearly six years old by then and more importantly, it has no designated successor to eat into its share. Under earlier development and servicing models, Windows 10 would have been superseded by Windows 11 by now – with 11 competing for a finite share – with Windows 12 halfway through engineering. Instead, Windows 10 is to be the last Windows … ever … meaning that at some point in the not-too-distant future, that OS should own close to 100% of Windows.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ data, macOS marked a record 11.6% in desktop OS share. November was the third consecutive month during which macOS’s share was 11% or higher, a number never breached before September. Increases in Apple’s operating system have been balanced by corresponding declines in Windows as a whole, with November’s 86.1% the second-lowest level ever for the business-standard OS.

macOS’s trajectory may push it above 12% by February, according to projections based on its 12-month average.

Net Applications calculates operating system share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions to measure browser activity.

Windows by the numbers: October 2019

“Friends, users, countrymen, lend me your ears.
I come to bury Windows 7, not to praise her.
The evil that software does lives after it;
The good is oft interred with its bones.
So let it be with Windows 7.” — Windows 10

Orating the funeral of a venerable predecessor is what Windows 10 does these days. And it’s happy to do so.

According to data published Friday by analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10’s share of all personal computers jumped 1.9 percentage points — the fourth consecutive month with gains of a full point or more — to end October with 54.3%. Meanwhile, Windows 10’s portion of the user share of all Windows PCs rose to 62.7%, closing in on the major milestone of two-thirds.

(The percentage of Windows PCs is larger than the percentage of all personal computers because Windows does not power every desktop or notebook. In October, Windows ran 86.8% of the world’s systems. Of the remainder, all but a quarter of one percent ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS, with Apple’s operating system the largest of the trio.)

As always in the zero-sum struggle for user share, Windows 10’s advance foretold Windows 7’s retreat. In October, Windows 7’s share dropped by 1.3 percentage points to 26.9% of all PCs and 31% of those powered by Windows of one flavor or another. Last month’s decline was the smallest in the last four months, but still represented a 25% increase over the average of the last 12.

There’s no question that Windows 7’s decline has accelerated. Over the last six months, Windows 7 has shed more than 9.5 percentage points, or three-fourths of all losses in the past year. The six-month number was a record for the 10-year-old operating system. And Windows 7 rang up losses of 4.9 points during the past three months, a slightly faster clip yet.

The pace was quicker than XP’s before its retirement. During the same six-month stretch prior to Windows XP’s support expiration in 2014, that OS dropped 8 percentage points, 1.5 fewer than did Windows 7. And in the three months that corresponded to Windows 7’s decline of nearly 5 points, XP lost just 2 points.

Microsoft will retire Windows 7 on Jan. 14, 2020, or in about 10 weeks. The Redmond, Wash. will deliver the final security updates to customers on that date, although businesses will be able to purchase post-termination patches through the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program.

Windows 7: Weaker but not dead yet

Although the last four months have rejiggered the Windows 7-to-10 landscape, the decade-old corporate veteran isn’t about to just lie down and die.

Yes, Computerworld‘s latest forecast — based on the 12-month average — has Windows 7 powering 26.2% of all Windows PCs on January 31, 2020, nearly two points lower than the prediction of only a month ago and 4.5 points under July’s prognostication. But even a year after its departure from public support, Windows 7 will still run an astounding number of personal computers.

In January 2021, Windows 7 should still account for 12% of all Windows operating systems, about one in every eight PCs and equivalent to approximately 180 million machines.

The stubborn remainder may be larger than that. When Windows XP fell off the support list, it accounted for about 29% of all Windows OSes. Two years later — April 2016 — XP had shrunk, of course, but still accounted for 11.9% of all Windows. If Windows 7 follows that line rather than the one now forecast — and remember, the current prediction is based on a very aggressive decline — it, too, would retain a double-digit share as late as 2022.

(Counter-intuitive it may be — one would think users would want to get off an outdated OS as quickly as possible — but historically, operating system declines have slowed after the retirement date has come and gone. The pressure of a deadline has disappeared and users, some of them anyway, may believe in for a penny, in for a pound, and keep running the unpatched software.)

Applying Net Applications’ numbers in crafting projections also brings clarity to another interesting element of the Windows 7-to-10 transition: Windows 10 will soon boast record user share numbers.

By December, according to the newest forecast, Windows 10 will account for 67.3% of all Windows OSes, a fraction that will be larger than Windows 7’s at its peak. In June 2015, the month before Windows 10 debuted, Windows 7 had a 67.1% share of all Windows.

Windows 10 may even exceed Windows XP’s command of the Windows ecosystem. In February 2007, at XP’s highest point in Net Applications’ measurements, the then-six-year-old OS powered 90.6% of all Windows PCs. (That astounding number was possible because XP’s successor — the flop Vista — was late in launching and XP’s forerunners, such as Windows 98 or Windows Me, had been retired or stunk, respectively.)

By the linear projection composed of Windows 10’s last 12 months of movement, the OS — the last Windows, Microsoft has said, with no replacement as they have been traditionally understood — should own 90.8% of the Windows share by March 2021.

Net Applications calculates operating system share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions to measure browser activity.

Windows by the numbers: September 2019

Windows 10 last month continued to shove its ancestor out into traffic so it can steal Windows 7’s share.

According to analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10’s share of all personal computers climbed 1.4 percentage points — the third straight month of a gain of more than a point — and reached 52.4% in September. Windows 10’s part of all Windows PCs, meanwhile, climbed to almost 61%, the first time the OS cracked the 60% mark.

(The percentage of Windows PCs is larger than the percentage of all personal computers because Windows does not power every PC. In September, Windows ran 86% of the world’s machines. All but a tiny bit of the rest ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS.)

In the zero-sum of the Windows universe, 10’s gain was Windows 7’s loss. During September, Windows 7’s share plunged by 2.2 percentage points to 28.2% of all PCs and 32.8% of the ones running Windows. The month’s decline was more than a third larger than August’s and the second largest in the past 22 months, beaten only by the astounding 3.6 points of July, which kicked off the three-months-and-counting shrinking of the elderly operating system.

Microsoft will retire Windows 7 on Jan. 14, 2020, or in a little more than three months.

Also on a continued downswing is the Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 combination. (The former is officially unsupported by Microsoft.) Together, they dropped seven-tenths of a percentage point, about three-fourths as much as in August and the second most for a single month in two years. Now at 4.1% of all PC operating systems and 4.8% of those running Windows, the 8/8.1 twosome is slowly expiring.

Windows 7 sinks its share ship

Over the last three months, the Windows 7-to-Windows 10 picture has been drastically redrawn. Earlier predictions pegged Windows 7’s January share status as high as the upper 30s, which would have been significantly higher than the historical trend for an OS leaving support. But Computerworld‘s newest forecast — based on the 12-month average — has Windows 7 at 28% at the end of January, almost two points lower than the prediction of a month ago and nearly three lower than in July.

A year later — in January 2021 — Windows 7 and Windows 10 should be at 13% and 86%, respectively, five to seven points different than the projection generated from August’s data. While both numbers may be an exaggeration produced by some unusual data this month — notably an uncharacteristically large decline in Windows’ total share — the signs now point to a rapid transition from Windows 7 to 10.

There will still be laggards. Millions of them, in fact. But the 28% currently forecast as Windows 7’s share at support expiration would be under the 29% of all Windows PCs still running Windows XP when that OS left support in April 2014. That was a first for Windows 7. Comparisons between Windows XP’s actual decline and Windows 7’s predicted descent have until very recently portrayed the latter as a loafer because the data indicated users were more reluctant to give up Windows 7 than they had been letting go of XP. Not true.

With three months left before Windows 7’s support demise, there remains enough time, of course, for a monkey to throw a wrench into the works. But that’s unlikely.

Just as is any second-guessing by Microsoft. Any time a Windows version is slated for retirement, rumors percolate that the Redmond, Wash. company might or even will grant a reprieve and extend free support. Don’t believe such talk.

Nothing has made Microsoft’s position clearer than the time and effort it’s expended to pitch the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program for Windows 7. The pay-for-patches deal will provide fixes for vulnerabilities the firm marks “Critical,” its top-most ranking, for up to three years or through mid-January 2023. ESU targets business customers, not consumers, running Windows 7 Enterprise or Windows 7 Professional. If the company were even thinking about giving Windows 7 more time on free support, it would not bang the ESU drum as it has.

Net Applications calculates operating system share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions to measure browser activity.

Windows by the numbers: August 2019

Windows 10 for the second straight month surged in user share as the drive toward the deadline for its Windows 7 predecessor entered its final five months.

According to analytics company Net Applications, Windows 10’s share of all personal computers jumped 2.1 percentage points — the second consecutive month of two or more points — to close August at 51%. It was the first time Windows 10 accounted for a majority of all personal computer operating systems. Windows 10’s part of Windows PCs, meanwhile, climbed to 58%, putting the OS on track to power two-thirds of all Windows machines by the time Microsoft rolls out its next major feature upgrade next March.

(The second number — the percentage of Windows PCs — is larger than the first because Windows does not power every PC; in August, Windows ran 87.9% of the world’s machines. All but a Lilliputian fraction of the rest ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS.)

As Windows 10’s share jumped, Windows 7 dropped, albeit at not the same rate. Windows 7’s share fell by 1.5 percentage points to 30.3% of all personal computers and 34.5% of those running Windows. The monthly decline was less than half of July’s but still the fifth-largest over the past 12 months. August was also the sixth straight month of decline for the aged operating system, which is to be retired from public support on Jan. 14, 2020.

Also on the downswing, and in a major way, was the duo of Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. (The former is officially unsupported by Microsoft, yet approximately seven-tenths of one percent of all Windows PCs still run that OS.) Together, they shed 1.1 percentage points of share, the largest amount since December 2016 when Windows 8.1 was near the tail of its post-Windows 10-debut downturn. Now at just 4.8% of all PC operating system and 5.5% of those running Windows, the 8/8.1 twosome are slowly, very slowly — like the remnants of Windows XP — vanishing. Unlike most Windows editions, however, these will be nearly invisible by the time their support expires in January 2023.

Less for Windows 7 means more for Windows 10

The continued exodus from Windows 7 and more importantly, the accumulation of share under Windows 10’s column, puts the migration’s end game in a different light. Where earlier forecasts pegged Windows 7 at-retirement remainder as high as the upper 30s, the numbers are now much more in line with historical trends.

Computerworld‘s latest forecast — based on the operating system’s 12-month average change — now has Windows 7 down to 29.8% at the end of January, nearly a point lower than the prediction made the month before. That shows the impact of the large August decline.

Meanwhile, Windows 10 should account for approximately 64% of all Windows installations when the older OS drops off support, an increase of two points from the month-ago forecast. A year later — January 2021 — Windows 7 and Windows 10 should be at 18% and 79%, respectively, two to three points different than the projection generated from July’s data.

The 29.8% currently forecast as Windows 7’s share at support expiration is very close to the 29% of all Windows PCs still running Windows XP when that OS left support. Until recently, comparisons between Windows XP’s actual decline and Windows 7’s predicted descent always portrayed the latter as a loafer and laggard; the data indicated that users were more reluctant to give up Windows 7 than they had XP.

For the moment, that’s not be the case.

Microsoft could accelerate the Windows 7-to-Windows 10 movement if it put its money where its mouth is. “If you continue to use Windows 7 after support has ended, your PC will still work, but it will become more vulnerable to security risks and viruses,” the company contended in an end-of-support FAQ.

A last minute repeat of the year-long free upgrade offer for Windows 7 Home and Windows 7 Professional systems would go a long ways toward reducing the number of PCs likely to be “more vulnerable to security risks.” Although such a move is unlikely — at the least it would impact sales of new Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro — it would not be any more inconceivable than was the 2015-2016 offer.

The 12-month average increase of Windows 10 during the free offer was 1.7 percentage points, according to Net Applications. If Microsoft offered free upgrades immediately and if the effect were similar to the original, the January 2020 user share of Windows 10 would be about 68%, or four points higher than the current forecast. Windows 7 would be approximately four points lower, or around 26%, when it falls off the support list.

What does the difference between 30% and 26% for Windows 7 represent? About 60 million fewer PCs “vulnerable to security risks.”

That’s a lot of safer users.

Windows by the numbers: July 2019

Now we’re talkin’.

A month after Windows users took a break from dumping Windows 7 for Windows 10, in July they put shoulders to various wheels and … shoved.

According to web metrics vendor Net Applications, Windows 7’s share of all personal computers plunged precipitously last month, falling 3.6 percentage points — the second-largest amount in a single month for the aged OS — to end July at 31.8%. Meanwhile, Windows 7’s portion of only those PCs running Windows also plummeted, falling to 36%, a number not seen since late 2011 when the operating system was barely two years old and busily nibbling away at Windows XP.

(The second number is larger than the first because Windows does not power every PC; in July, Windows ran 88.5% of the world’s machines. All but a tiny fraction of the rest ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS.)

At the same time, Windows 10’s share jumped by 3.1 percentage points to 48.9% of all personal computers and 55.2% of those running Windows. The monthly increase was the second-largest ever for Windows 10 (first place went to March 2019), while both percentages were records for the OS.

So, did millions suddenly drop Windows 7 and switch to Windows 10? (Net Applications’ data and Computerworld‘s calculations pegged the leaving-Windows-7 number at 61 million, the moving-to-Windows-10 number at 51 million.) Unclear. The change rate wasn’t implausible — other measurements have gone up, or down, just as dramatically and been proven to be accurate if not exact — and the time before Windows 7 falls off the support list is very short.

Earlier hints of Windows 10 acceleration were telling

Last month, Computerworld highlighted the quickening of Windows 10 growth by showing the difference between the 6- and 12-month averages. The sudden addition of another 3+ points in July only skewed the numbers further toward that acceleration. Also telling are the new forecasts that July’s Windows 10 upswing — and Windows 7’s downturn — generated.

Windows 7’s future — based, as always, on the operating system’s 12-month average change — must now be more palatable to Microsoft, which earlier had to have been concerned about the operating system’s stubbornness. Computerworld‘s latest calculation says that in January 2020, when Windows 7 exits support, its user share should stand at 30.7%, a whole five points lower than our prognostication of the month before. That’s a lot fewer PCs stranded without security updates.

Meanwhile, Windows 10 should account for approximately 62% of all Windows installations when the older OS drops off support, an increase of four points from the month-ago forecast. A year later — January 2021 — Windows 7 and Windows 10 will be at 20% and 76%, respectively.

Of special note is that the 30.7% currently forecast as Windows 7’s user share at support expiration is very close to the 29% of all Windows PCs running Windows XP five years ago when it left support. For the last two years, the comparison between Windows XP’s actual vanishing act and Windows 7’s predicted performance always put the latter in the worst light; the data proclaimed that users were reluctant to give up Windows 7.

Not in July. In July, millions apparently didn’t need anyone to pry the 10-year-old OS from their cold hands. They gave it up without a fight.

Windows by the numbers: June 2019

Apparently, just six months before Windows 7 hits retirement, users decided to take a break from migrating to the latest shiny, Windows 10.

According to web metrics company Net Applications, anyway.

The chances that everyone pressed Pause in June are about the same as pocketing a million from a scratch-it. In other words, highly unlikely. But that’s what Net Applications claimed Monday.

Windows 7’s share of all personal computers barely budged in June, remaining at 35.4%, and its portion of the PCs running Windows stayed put at 40.1%. (The second number was significantly larger than the first because Windows does not power every personal computer; in June, Windows ran 88.3% of the world’s machines. All but a miniscule fraction of the rest ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS.)

Meanwhile, Windows 10’s numbers were almost as immune to change. The operating system’s share of all PCs reached 45.8%, an increase of less than one-tenth of a percentage point. Windows 10’s share of Windows PCs did not move at all, sticking with 51.8%. (The stubbornness of the share of Windows overall was an artifact of rounding.)

So, what’s going on? Did Windows users, especially commercial customers tasked with getting off Windows 7 before security updates dry up, really stop doing — what they’d done the month before — upgrading from 7 to 10?

Who knows? As Computerworld has noted numerous times when discussing analytics data that tries (pretends, some would argue) to reveal Microsoft’s secrets, the whole process can be an impenetrable black box. Everything must be inferred, whether X gained when Y declined, or in this case, movement stalled.

It may simply be the data itself; Net Applications has visibility only on sites it monitors for clients. Its user share numbers are extrapolations at best, and so far from definitive to be laughable. But failing Microsoft’s own data — which it has, thanks to the telemetry embedded within Windows — it’s the best outsiders have. (Virtually every estimate of OS or browser share is based on the same principles used by Net Applications.)

What’s important, as always, is to keep an eye on the longer-term trends. If any of this is worthwhile, it’s the over-time movements of an OS. That’s why, even in a month which stumps easy analysis, Net Applications’ Windows numbers can provide insight.

Windows 10 still accelerates

By Net Applications’ numbers, Windows 10’s growth still shows signs of speeding up. The average per-month change over the past 12 months has been +0.84 of a percentage point. But over the last 6 months, the average climbed to +1.1 points, representing an increase of about 24%.

However, Windows 7’s decline has not kept pace. Rather than accelerate, it has slowed. While Windows 7’s average per-month movement over the last 12 months has been -0.53 percentage points, the 6-month average was only -0.25 points, or less than half. If Windows 7’s fall was speeding up, the 6-month average decline should be larger not smaller than the 12-month.

That’s why Windows 7’s forecast — based, as always, on the operating system’s 12-month average change — now pegs its January 2020 user share at 35.7%, nearly half a point higher than the prognostication of the month before. (Windows 7 will exit support Jan. 14, 2020.) That’s a lot of PCs destined to go without security updates.

Meanwhile, Windows 10 should stand at about 58% of all Windows installations when the older OS drops off support, a decrease of approximately two points from the early-June forecast. A year later — January 2021 — Windows 7 and Windows 10 will be at 28.5% and 69.5%, respectively.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ June reporting, the user share of macOS slipped by more than a tenth of a percentage point to 9.2%, the lowest mark for Apple’s desktop operating system in over a year. macOS has lost user share for three straight months. Linux’s user share climbed by almost two-tenths of a point to 2.1%, while Google’s Chrome OS stayed flat at 0.4%.

Windows by the numbers: May 2019

Windows 10 in May added another 1.6 percentage points to its user share total, finally pushing the four-year-old operating system over the 50% mark.

According to California web analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10’s share of the PCs running Windows reached 51.8% last month, the first time the OS accounted for a majority. Windows 10’s May growth put it at 45.7% of all personal computers. (The first number was significantly larger than the second because Windows does not power every personal computer; in May, Windows ran 88.3% of the world’s machines. All but a tiny fraction of the rest ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS.)

May’s gain was only about half that in March, when Windows 10 went on a binge and added a record 3.3 points, the most since August 2015 when Microsoft was offering a free upgrade for consumers. But it was the sixth in the past year where the increase was of one or more percentage points.

Meanwhile, Windows 7 fell one point in May, sliding to 35.4% of all PCs and 40.1% of those running Windows. The dead-OS-walking Windows XP — which recently was patched by Microsoft, five years after its official retirement — also shed some weight, dispensing with two-tenths of a point, ending at 2.2% of all PCs and 2.5% of the PCs powered by Windows.

Windows 8 and 8.1 — Computerworld tosses both in the same bucket — got with the program, too, as between them they lost two-tenths of a percentage point, dwindling to 4.8% of all personal computers and 5.4% of those running Windows.

In general terms, Windows played out May as it should have, with the newest edition gaining ground and all its ancestors giving up share.

Windows 10’s growth accelerates

The prognosis for Windows 7’s retirement, though, remained grimmer than Microsoft would prefer.

Computerworld‘s new prognostication — based, as always, on the operating system’s 12-month average movement — has Windows 7 at a too-high 35.3% of all Windows machines at the end of January. (The 2009 OS will exit support Jan. 14, 2020.) That’s in line with forecasts of the last several months and a figure unlikely to budge; as the number of months before retirement shrinks, it becomes increasingly difficult to move the forecast needle.

Meanwhile, Windows 10 should stand at about 60% of all Windows when 7 drops off support. A year later — January 2021 — the two will be at 28% (Windows 7) and 73% (Windows 10).

Those numbers for Windows 7 — 35% in 2020 and 28% in 2021 — are higher than the same-time figures for Windows XP when and after it got kicked to the curb. That means millions of machines will be running an unpatched Windows 7 OS come February. How many millions? Our estimate: 530 million, give or take, based on the well-established rule of thumb that around 1.5 billion personal computers run Windows worldwide.

That’s a lot of potential exploit-ready targets.

There are signs that the switch from Windows 7 to Windows 10 has accelerated, as one would expect as the deadline approaches and customers get serious about migrations.

The average per-month gain over the past three months has been 1.8 percentage points, which was 30% higher than the 1.3 points averaged over the last six months. The six-month average, meanwhile, was 27% greater than the nine-tenths of a point during the preceding 12 months.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ May numbers, the overall user share of macOS slid by a tenth of a percentage point to 9.3%, the lowest mark for Apple’s desktop operating system in nearly a year. Linux’s user share also dipped by a tenth of a point to 1.9% while Google’s Chrome OS edged up to 0.4%.

Windows by the numbers: April 2019

Windows 7 will remain a widely-used OS for at least the next half-decade if its predecessor Windows XP serves as even a crude yardstick.

Five years ago last month, Microsoft moved Windows XP onto its do-not-support list. The company retired the well-worn operating system on April 8, 2014. Yet even now, 60 months after the milestone, more than 40 million PCs worldwide rely on the now-ancient software.

Windows XP’s post-retirement trajectory can be instructive when forecasting what may happen to Windows 7 when it falls off the support list in eight months, on Jan. 14, 2020.

Windows 7: Going, going … and still going

Windows XP exited support with a user share – the measurement of personal computer operating systems’ usage as defined by analytics vendor Net Application – of approximately 29% of all Windows.

That puts Windows 7 in a spot, what with the current Computerworld prediction that at the end of January 2020, Windows 7 will account for just over 35% of all Windows. (That number has fluctuated over the last two years between the low and high 30s, depending on the rate of Windows 7’s user share decline over the preceding 12 months.)

Not surprisingly, Windows XP saw its largest after-retirement drop-off in the first year after Microsoft pulled the support plug. During that span, XP’s share of all Windows fell from 29% to 17.5%, representing a 65.5% decrease. This large wave was almost certainly composed of the conscientious who for one reason or another had missed the deadline but knew they needed a newer OS if they were to keep getting security updates.

(Net Applications’ data seemed to confirm that suspicion, since XP’s decline from April 2014 to April 2015 was front-loaded; the first six months of that year accounted for 60% of the 12-month total.)

Over the next three years, Windows XP’s share of all Windows dropped by about 50% each year. From April 2015 to April 2016, for example, Windows XP slid from 17.5% to 12%, a 5.5-percentage point fall and a decline of 46%. The next two years each saw a decline of 56%. Think of those years as the gradual surrender of XP users who had felt no great pressure to upgrade. They remained sanguine about running an outdated OS, security updates be damned, but eventually left the 2001 XP behind or dumped PCs altogether.

However, in the fifth year after Windows XP’s retirement – April 2018 to April 2019 – XP’s rate of decline accelerated to nearly 77% as its share of all Windows plunged from 5% to 2.8%. The faster fall could represent last-ditch users who finally woke up to the fact that their OS was not only old, but Microsoft’s Methuselah.

If Windows 7 follows Windows XP, here are the numbers

No two operating systems are alike. If they were, Windows Vista – the intended replacement for Windows XP – would have a user share larger than two-tenths of a percentage point. (That’s about one-thirteenth as much as XP, from an OS five years younger.) And Windows 8, theoretically 7’s successor, would account for more than just 5.7% of all Windows.

But if Windows 7 does end up following XP’s lead in post-retirement, here is what will happen.

IDG/Gregg Keizer

The first year, through January 2021, Windows 7 will slump from 35.3% (again, that’s the latest forecast, based on the 12-month average) to 21.3%. That 14-point fall – a 66% decline – would represent users and organizations scrambling to upgrade in time but missing the deadline. Expect a majority of that year-long slide, say about 8.5 percentage points, to happen before July 31, 2020.

Over the next three years, Windows 7 would drop further, hitting 14.6%, 9.3% and 6% at the end of January 2022, 2023 and 2024, respectively. The trio may not look harmful to the Windows ecosystem – organizations in particular are at risk from even a small number of unpatched PCs, as attackers can exploit them to gain a beach head on the network for damage and theft within the perimeter – but expressed a different way, the first number means that one out of every seven Windows personal computers will still be running 7 two years after it’s put to pasture. For comparison, about one in eight Windows computers ran XP at retirement +2 years.

(Microsoft’s decision to offer paid extended support for Windows 7 to corporate customers looks smart under this scenario. That support can be purchased to cover devices through January 2023.)

The fifth year of Windows 7’s after-support timeline – January 2025 – would end with 3.4% of all Windows PCs running the ancient OS.

Windows 7 milestones before retirement

In the coming months, Windows 7 will continue to shed user share, but almost certainly not every month. Net Applications, for instance, has claimed Windows 7 gained share in three of the past 12 months.

The operating system is on a 12-month trend of -0.6%, meaning that on average it loses six-tenths of a percentage point monthly. If it keeps to that average, Windows 7 would slip under the 40% (of all Windows PCs) mark in late June, end September with 38% and then close the year at an even 36%.

Meanwhile, Windows 10 – which in the zero-sum OS game wins when Windows 7 loses – should make 52% in June, 56% in October and fall under 59% by the time Microsoft crosses 7 off the support list in January.

A year after Windows 7’s retirement – in January 2021 – Windows 10 should stand at more than 70% of all Windows PCs.

Windows by the numbers: March 2019

Windows 10 made up for lost ground last month, adding the most user share since the OS’s first full month of availability four years ago.

The large March increase stood in stark contrast to February’s odd couple: a decline in Windows 10 share and a corresponding boost to the aged Windows 7.

According to California web analytics company Net Applications, Windows 10’s share leaped by 3.3 percentage points in March, closing the month at 43.6% of all personal computers and 49.9% of all PCs running Windows. (The second number is always larger than the first because Windows does not power all personal computers; in March, Windows ran 87.5% of the world’s machines. All but a tiny fraction of the rest ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS.)

The 3.3 points was the largest one-month gain since August 2015’s 4.9 percentage points during the initial explosion of installations caused by Microsoft’s free upgrade offer. Windows 10 launched July 31, 2015, and the offer ran a full year.

Meanwhile, Windows 7 dropped 1.9 points in March, falling to 36.5% of all PCs and 41.7% of those running Windows. Even the walking-dead Windows XP — officially retired from support five years ago this month — chipped in, shedding 1.1 points, sliding to 2.3% of all PCs and shrinking to an insignificant 2.6% of PCs powered by Windows.

The upturn of Windows 10 and downturn of all other editions flipped the world from its February upside-down state, returning it right-side-up so the newest OS grew and older OSes didn’t. A month ago, Computerworld pointed out that Net Applications’ baffling February data would quickly sort itself out, as it had before. It has.

Windows forecasts turn more favorable for Microsoft

The massive increase in Windows 10’s user share and the smaller-but-still-significant decrease in Windows 7’s made a mess of the predictions Computerworld posted 30 days ago.

Our new forecast — based on the operating system’s 12-month average movement — puts Windows 10 in the majority spot sometime this month, not in October as said the previous prediction. According to the latest projection, Windows 10 should be at nearly 51% of all Windows by the end of April.

Likewise, Windows 7’s return to its normal state of decline means that fewer machines should be running the operating system on Jan. 14, 2020, Microsoft’s retirement date for the 2009 OS. At the end of January, Windows 7 should be powering around 35% of all Windows PCs, not the 40% that February’s forecast asserted from skewed numbers.

(Windows 10 should be running 59% of all Windows systems when 7 shuffles to OS assisted living.)

Even if Windows 7 runs the smaller number — 35% — of PCs come its retirement party, the OS would have a bigger problem than did Windows XP, which ended support still running about 29% of all Windows personal computers at the time. A few more months posting declines like March’s — between 1 and 2 percentage points — would ease the pressure to purge Windows 7 as the deadline looms.

There’s some hope that will happen: In Windows XP’s final 10 months — about the time Windows 7 has left — the OS had five with declines of 1.4 points or larger, and three of 2 points or more. If Windows 7 sees similar drops during its remaining time, it would reach retirement running just under 29% of all Windows systems, almost exactly the same as did XP a half decade ago.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ March data, the overall user share of Windows climbed less than one-tenth of a percentage point to 87.5%. MacOS and OS X rose, too, by two-tenths of a point, to 9.9%. Linux’s user share stabilized at 2.1% while Google’s Chrome OS edged up slightly to 0.4%.

Windows by the numbers: February 2019

When the groundhog saw his shadow last month, it wasn’t a signal of an early spring but a hint that Windows would have one of those upside-down stretches.

Violating the cardinal rule of newer Windows editions, Windows 10 dropped the most user share since March 2018, making for a confusing picture about how customers’ migrations are proceeding. Meanwhile, the already-supplanted Windows 7 added share to its total last month, erasing more than half of the end-of-the-year dramatic decline that at the time seemed to show a quickening pace toward its retirement.

According to web analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10’s share fell by six-tenths of a percentage point in February, ending the month at 40.3% of all personal computers and 46.1% of all PCs running Windows. (The second number is always larger than the first because Windows does not power all personal computers; in February, Windows ran 87% of the world’s machines. All but a small fraction of the rest ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS.)

Windows 7 added user share for the second straight month, gaining a whopping 1.2 percentage points to rebound to 38.4% of all PCs and 43.9% of those running Windows. At the same time, the should-be-dead Windows XP put on six-tenths of a points during February, climbing to 3.3% of all PCs and stretching to 3.8% of systems powered by Windows.

All in all, it was a mess. Windows 10 was supposed to be growing but it wasn’t. Windows 7 and Windows XP were to be shedding share, but they weren’t. Windows overall has been losing share, surely if slowly, but instead it gained.

The last time Net Applications’ numbers were so odd was March 2018, a month where Windows 10 lost eight-tenths of a percentage point, Windows 7 gained 1.8 points and Windows XP grew by eight-tenths of a point. But within two months, the normal march upward (Windows 10) and downward (Windows 7, XP) resumed.

Expect the same after February’s mysterious up-and-down, which like all single-month exams of OS analytics, are susceptible to oddball data or weird shifts in the browsing habits of those who happened to be monitored by Net Applications.

Keep an eye on the long-term forecast

Even though Windows 10 and Windows 7 traded usual behaviors last month, the former stayed well ahead of the latter in overall popularity: 46.1% versus 43.9%. There’s no danger of Windows 10 losing its grip on the No. 1 OS position.

With the latest data, Computerworld‘s forecast — based on each operating system’s 12-month average movement — now pegs October as when Windows 10 should reach a majority. That forecast puts Windows 10 at 50.4% of all Windows after Halloween.

But Windows 7’s backwards maneuver in February could result in more machines still running the OS when Microsoft retires it Jan. 14, 2020; when Windows 7’s support ends, it should be powering more than 40% of all Windows PCs. Windows 10 should be running 52% of the same group.

The first number — the projected user share for Windows 7 at its retirement — is higher than its January forecast because of the share increase last month. Windows 10’s predicted share is lower than the previous projection, down four points due to the February decline.

Although Net Applications’ numbers are not gospel, failing Microsoft’s publication of detailed statistics from its incoming telemetry they’re the best available. And increasingly the data paints a picture of Windows 7’s stubbornness. If more than 40% of all PCs in January do run Windows 7, as the forecast foretells, the situation would be even more problematic than when Windows XP reached retirement powering about 29% of all Windows systems.

That Windows 7 benchmark — 40.5% of Windows PCs running it at retirement — could either be interpreted as a rabid endorsement by customers or a denunciation of its successor, Windows 10. Or both. But the simplest explanation might be that users are much more uncertain of changing operating systems when the new standard upends the update/upgrade model. It may turn out that millions of Windows users will refuse to abandon Windows 7’s traditional refresh practices, security risks be damned.

Elsewhere in February’s results, the overall user share of Windows rose to 87.4%. In the zero-sum OS share game, that meant the combined share of all macOS and OS X editions had to fall: It did, to 9.7%. For the second consecutive month, Linux’s user share slipped by three-tenths of a point, while Google’s Chrome OS stayed flat. Those OSes ended February at 2.1% and 0.4%, respectively.

Windows by the numbers: January 2019

Windows 10’s user share last month jumped by the largest amount in more than two and a half years, a strong signal that customers running older OSes may have gotten serious about meeting the looming retirement deadline of Windows 7.

According to web analytics company Net Applications, Windows 10’s share climbed by 1.7 percentage points in January, ending the month at 40.9% of all personal computers and 47.4% of all PCs running Windows. (The second number is always larger than the first because Windows does not power all personal computers; in January, Windows ran 86% of the world’s machines. Most of the rest ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS.)

In an odd turn-about, Windows 7 added user share last month, gaining three-tenths of a percentage point to reach 37.2% of all PCs and 43.1% of those running Windows. Meanwhile, the long-obsolete Windows XP shed 1.8 percentage points during January, putting it at just 2.8% of all PCs and an almost as meager 3.2% of systems powered by Windows.

Both Windows 7’s and XP’s shifts, however, could be described as much as data corrections as actual increases and decreases. By Net Applications’ measurements, Windows 7 lost 2 points in December alone — the biggest drop since July 2016 — so the slight increase in January could well be a modest adjustment to what had been an overly-optimistic report earlier. More likely still: Windows XP’s dramatic drop may not have really meant millions suddenly ditched the unsupported OS.

During the three months of October through December, Net Applications asserted that XP had illogically gained 1.3 percentage points. The 1.8-point decline of January voided those increases completely, then added in a slump that equaled the average losses of several months over the past three years.

Windows 10 surges for second month in a row

Windows 10’s January growth of 1.7 points was the largest increase since August 2016 (excepting a November 2017 data recalibration by Net Applications) and just as important, the second straight month of gains larger than a point. (The last time Windows 10 posted something similar was July-August 2016.) The so-far-sustained boost in user share may presage growing momentum as commercial customers push to upgrade the bulk of their PCs from Windows 7 before the Jan. 14, 2020, support retirement. At least, that’s what Microsoft must hope.

When Windows 7’s support ends, it should be powering nearly 38% of all Windows PCs, while Windows 10 should be running 56% of the same group. The first number — the projected user share for Windows 7 at its retirement — was higher than its December forecast because of the share increase in January. Windows 10’s predicted share was also higher than the previous projection, up a full point.

The Windows 7 forecast showcased the staying power of that operating system, and the impossibility that Microsoft could do anything short of giving away Windows 10 to all customers to significantly change the 2009’s edition status. Even if Windows 7’s share fell by a point each month for the next 11 months, the OS would still power almost 30% of all Windows PCs at its retirement. That would still be a larger portion than Windows XP’s when it dropped off the support list in 2014.

(Similarly, if Windows 10 recorded average increases of one point each month for the next 11, it would reach 63% by January.)

With numbers like those, the post-retirement “Windows 7 Extended Security Updates” (ESU) announced last year may be looking better to enterprises. For an escalating cost each year, with a cap of three years, companies running Windows 7 Professional or Windows 7 Enterprise will continue to receive security updates for those editions.

Microsoft has not made public prices for ESU, although in a document obtained from its website, the company admitted that the cost will double each year. In other words, if the price was $100 per PC for the first year, it would run $200 the second and $400 the third. “We believe that the vast majority of customers who need to purchase Windows 7 ESU will need only one year of coverage,” Microsoft said in that document, justifying the steep increases. “The annual price increases help cover our additional engineering costs of providing the support and are intended to incent customers to continue their momentum on Windows 10 deployments.”

Elsewhere in January’s results, the overall user share of Windows remained flat at 86%. The combined share of all macOS and OS X editions was also stagnant at 10.7%. Linux’s user share slipped by three-tenths of a point and Google’s Chrome OS edged up somewhat, with those OSes at 2.5% and 0.4%, respectively.

Windows by the numbers: December 2018

Nearly three and a half years after its release, Windows 10 last month surpassed its enterprise predecessor, Windows 7, as the most popular operating system on the planet.

According to analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10 jumped by 1.1 percentage points in user share in December, climbing to 39.2% of all personal computers and 45.5% of all PCs running Windows. (The second number is larger than the first because Windows does not power all PCs; in December, Windows ran 86% of the world’s systems. Most of the remainder ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS, in decreasing order.)

Meanwhile, Windows 7 lost 2 percentage points last month, four times the loss of November and the largest one-month decline in over a year. Windows 7 ended 2018 on 36.9% of all personal computers and on 42.8% of all Windows PCs.

The moment when Windows 10 replaced Window 7 — the crossover point — came a month later than Computerworld predicted two months ago. Using the average monthly movement of each OS, that forecast envisioned a November crossover. It didn’t happen. (To be honest, the predictions were regularly voided when Windows 10 failed to meet growth expectations; in January 2018, for instance, crossover was tapped to occur in August.)

Crossover comes late

Crossover came late to Windows 7. The last major migration — from Windows XP to Windows 7 — reached crossover in August 2012, or 20 months before XP’s April 2014 retirement. Windows 10’s was less than 13 months before Windows 7’s retirement, currently slated for Jan. 14, 2020.

When Windows 7’s support ends, it should be powering slightly more than 36% of all Windows PCs, while Windows 10 will be running 55%. The first number — the projected user share for Windows 7 at its retirement — fell from the month-ago forecast (which pegged it at a record 40%) because the 2009 OS returned to a large decline in December.

By comparison, Windows XP accounted for 29% of all Windows PCs when it dropped off the support list.

Six months after Windows 7’s support expiration date, the OS should still power between 32% and 33% of all Windows PCs. By then, Windows 10 will have climbed to approximately 59%. In plainer terms, there will be lots of personal computers running the then-outdated Windows 7 without the safety net of security updates.

Microsoft will offer a temporary solution to businesses running Windows 7 Professional or Windows 7 Enterprise — the post-retirement Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESU) announced in September 2018 — for an escalating cost each year for up to three years.

Windows 10 adoption has been slower than 7’s

Even with Microsoft’s free Windows 10 upgrade offer for the first 12 months after launch, the operating system was never able to keep up with the adoption pace set by Windows 7 six years earlier.

In the first three complete calendar years after Windows 7’s debut — 2010, 2011 and 2012 — the OS added 16, 15 and 8 percentage points to its total, respectively, for a total of 39 points of user share.

However, Windows 10 added just 14, 9 and 6 percentage points — a total of 29 — during its three-year stretch of 2016, 2017 and 2018. Windows 10 never matched the growth of its ancestor, whether on a one-year basis or overall. And compared to Windows 7, Windows 10 was unable to sustain high volumes of growth: Windows 10’s slowed dramatically in the second year and its third year also fell short of Windows 7’s.

Bottom line: Net Applications’ data points to a mad dash to rid systems of Windows 7 just before, at and after the support deadline, one even more frantic than took place in the months before and after Windows XP’s end of support.

Elsewhere in December’s data, the user share of Windows slumped once again, dropping eight-tenths of a percentage point — the most since November 2017 — to 86%. The combined share of all macOS and OS X editions added nine-tenths of a point to the total user share, which ended the year at 10.7%, a record high for Apple’s OS. Linux’s user share rose by seven-tenths of a point and Google’s Chrome OS stayed flat, with those alternate OSes at 2.8% and 0.3%, respectively.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to visit its clients’ websites. It then tallies the visitor sessions. The result: a measurement of browser activity that reflects OS use.

Windows by the numbers: November 2018

Windows 10 battled Windows 7 last month for the title of Most Popular Windows, but again failed to land enough blows to put its opponent on the canvas.

According to U.S. analytics company Net Applications, Windows 10 slipped one-tenth of a percentage point in user share during November, falling back to 38.1% of all PCs and 43.8% of those running Windows. (The second number is larger than the first because Windows does not power all personal computers; in November, Windows ran 87% of the world’s systems. Most of the remainder ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS.)

Meanwhile, Windows 7 lost five-tenths of a percentage point last month, just a third as much as in October. Windows 7 closed November on 38.9% of all personal computers and on 44.7% of all Windows PCs.

The gap between Window 7 and Windows 10 closed to less than a percentage point for the first time. Crossover — when Windows 10 accounts for a larger percentage of Windows PCs than Windows 7 — should occur this month, according to Computerworld‘s latest calculations using the average monthly movement of each. (These forecasts are not infallible. A month ago, Computerworld predicted the crossover would take place in November. It didn’t.)

Windows 7-Windows 10 crossover arrives late

Crossover will have come late to Windows 7 if the forecast becomes reality. The last significant transition from one Windows edition to another — from Windows XP to Windows 7 — reached crossover in August 2012, or 20 months before XP’s April 2014 support retirement. This month is just a scant 13 months before Windows 7’s scheduled retirement.

When Windows 7 reaches the end of its support lifecycle in January 2020, Net Applications’ current trend lines show the operating system should be powering almost 40%, while Windows 10 will be running 53%. The first number — the projected user share for Windows 7 at its public support retirement — has never been higher than it is now.

By comparison, Windows XP accounted for just 29% of all Windows PCs when it dropped off the support list.

Unless migrations from Windows 7 to Windows 10 surge — no, positively balloon in volume — there are going to be a lot of people running the older OS after January 2020 without the safety net of security updates.

Microsoft will offer a temporary solution to businesses running Windows 7 Professional or Windows 7 Enterprise — the post-retirement Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESU) announced in September — for an escalating cost each year during a three-year stretch. That will give companies willing to pay for ESU until January 2023 to purge Windows 7. Customers unable or unwilling to play the additional support game through ESU, however, must either hustle or resign themselves to running an unpatched OS.

So much for the free upgrade offer

The slow uptake of Windows 10 — compared to Windows 7’s while XP aged out — dragged Microsoft’s 2015-2016 free upgrade offer back into the limelight.

From July 2015 to July 2016, the offer let customers running the Home or Pro/Professional versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 upgrade to Windows 10 free of charge. Businesses that relied on the Enterprise SKU (stock-keeping unit) were ineligible for the free upgrade, however.

Although the free upgrade spurred migrations, with Microsoft claiming 350 million devices running Windows 10 after just 11 months, that jump-start did not provide enough momentum to change the switch-OS dynamic. If Microsoft gave away Windows 10 to prevent another end-of-support dash — as some suspected because of the frenzied end to Windows XP’s retirement — it failed.

Elsewhere in the November data, the user share of Windows slipped again, falling three-tenths of a percentage point — the third straight month of about that amount of decline — to 87%. The combined share of all macOS and OS X editions accounted for 9.7%, a dip of three-tenths of a point. Linux and Google’s Chrome OS stayed flat at 2.1% and 0.3%, respectively.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to visit its clients’ websites. It then tallies the visitor sessions. The result: a measurement of browser activity that reflects OS use.

Windows by the numbers: October 2018

After a September stumble, Windows 10 last month resumed its march toward replacing Windows 7 as the world’s most popular operating system, an analytics vendor reported this week.

According to California-based Net Applications, Windows 10 added eight-tenths of a percentage point to its user share in October, reaching 38.3% of all PCs and 43.9% of those running Windows. (The second number is always larger than the first because Windows never powers all personal computers; in October, Windows ran 87.3% of the world’s systems. The remainder ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS.)

As expected, Windows 10’s October increase more than made up for the prior month’s downturn. It was slightly larger than the 12-month average for the three-year-old OS and likely puts Windows 10 back on track for a sustained climb.

Meanwhile, the veteran Windows 7 lost 1.6 percentage points of user share last month, its biggest decline since May. Windows 7 ended October on 39.4% of all personal computers and on 45.1% of all PCs running Windows.

Window 10 and Windows 7 have never been closer. The crossover point — the moment when Windows 10 powers a larger percentage of all Windows PCs than Windows 7 — will almost certainly occur this month, according to Computerworld‘s calculations using the average monthly movement of each. As recently as last month, that crossover was forecast for December.

Crossover will not mean an end to Windows 7, nor represent total victory for Windows 10. But the sooner-rather-than-later milestone means a better outlook for Windows 10 come January 2020, when Windows 7 reaches the end of standard support. At that point, Net Applications’ revised trend lines signal that Windows 10 should be running 60% of all Windows systems, with 37% still powered by Windows 7. Because of the business-as-usual increase of Windows 10 and also-normal decrease of Windows 7, those figures are higher and lower, respectively, then they were a month ago.

Microsoft may have just breathed a small sigh of relief, even though the company has claimed Windows 10 already is ahead of Windows 7 in at least one critical area.

“More than half of our commercial device installed base is now on Windows 10,” asserted Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella this week during a conference call to discuss the September quarter’s earnings. Microsoft based Nadella’s statement on telemetry received from Windows 7 and Windows 10 PCs in corporate environments. (That incoming data does not include all Windows 7 machines — not every such system transmits information to Microsoft’s servers — so the company may be undercounting the older OS.)

According to Computerworld‘s forecasts, which rely on Net Applications’ numbers, Windows 10 will reach the 50% line (of all in-use PCs, not just those in the enterprise) in April. At that time, Windows 7 will account for nearly 42% of all Windows.

Microsoft has been pushing customers, especially its best-paying customers — enterprises and other large organizations — to move to Windows 10 ASAP. The company line has been about 10’s security and manageability, all better than 7’s. But Microsoft has more skin in the game than that.

“The Windows 10 Pro strength and I think [the] commercial strength we’ve seen … continues to be a good signal for us,” said Microsoft CFO Amy Hood during the same earnings conference call. By “signal,” she meant the signs, internal at this point, of future revenue.

“That end of [Windows 7] support is about five quarters away, so we’ll continue to expect good signal and good demand in that [Windows 10] Pro segment,” Hood said. “The signal is demand is very good for Windows 10 and upgrades in modern hardware … so even if you have a tougher comp[arable to previous years], I think the demand signal and our opportunity to continue to sell Microsoft 365 in that process, and then upgrade to Office 365 as they do deployments, is a big opportunity for us to excel.”

Key in Hood’s commentary was the mention of Microsoft 365, the company’s most expensive subscription plan, which combines Windows 10 Enterprise with the top-tier Office 365 subscription and a host of other software, including for-IT management tools.

The faster Microsoft gets enterprises off Windows 7, the sooner its salespeople can pitch Microsoft 365 — a cornerstone of its OS revenue strategy — at those customers.

Elsewhere in the October data, the user share of Windows again slid, dropping another three-tenths of a percentage point — about the same as the month before — to 87.3%. The combined share of all macOS and OS X editions accounted for 10%, an increase of half of a point. Linux slipped two-tenths of a percentage point, to 2%, while Google’s Chrome OS was flat at a meager three-tenths of a point.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to visit its clients’ websites. It then tallies the visitor sessions, rather than count users, as it once did. The result? A measurement of browser activity that reflects OS use.

Windows by the numbers: September 2018

Windows 10 in September faltered in its battle to replace Windows 7, losing its chance this month of putting the older operating system in second place.

According to California analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10 retreated by four-tenths of a percentage point in September, putting its user share at 37.4% of all personal computers and 42.8% of those running Windows. (The second number is always larger than the first because Windows never powers all personal computers; in September, Windows ran 87.6% of the world’s systems. The remainder ran macOS, Linux or ChromeOS.)

September’s decline was one of only five recorded in the 38 months since the mid-2015 launch of the newer OS. More common has been Windows 10 advancing its user share: its monthly average has been an eight-tenths of a percentage point increase. In all but one of the prior cases where Windows 10 lost user share, the slide was brief and gains immediately resumed.

That will likely be what happens in October.

For September, however, Windows 10’s growth was put on pause while Windows 7’s was set to fast forward: The almost-retired Windows 7 climbed six-tenths of a percentage point to 40.9% of all personal computers and 46.7% of all PCs running Windows.

The crossover point — the moment when Windows 10 powers a larger percentage of all Windows PCs than Windows 7 — now looks to be December, according to Computerworld‘s calculations using the average monthly movement of each. As recently as last month, the crossover was predicted to occur in October.

Crossover will not put an end to Windows 7, of course, nor put Windows 10 on every PC. Trends for the two operating systems now indicate that in January 2020, when Windows 7 reaches the end of standard support, Windows 10 will run 57% of all Windows systems, with 38% still be powered by Windows 7. Because of the uncharacteristic decrease of Windows 10 and the just-as-odd increase of Windows 7, those figures were lower and higher, respectively, then they were a month ago.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft had a different take. In a presentation at last week’s Ignite conference, Brad Anderson, a corporate vice president in Microsoft’s enterprise mobility and management group, asserted that Windows 10’s crossover would take place much sooner. “Within the next two weeks, we will cross the point where there will be more Windows 10 in the enterprise than any other version of the operating system,” said Anderson (emphasis added). “In fact, it will cross the 50% line.”

According to forecasts that rely on Net Applications’ data, Windows 10 won’t break the 50% bar (of all in-use PCs, not just those in the enterprise) until May 2019. The difference could be explained by Anderson’s enterprise citation, which would omit consumer machines as well as those running in any business that doesn’t manage its Windows PCs with SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager) or Intune.

It’s to Microsoft’s benefit to advance the change narrative. Only with Windows 7’s demise can the Redmond, Wash. firm sell business customers pricey Microsoft 365 subscriptions — now one of the cornerstones of its strategy.

Anderson used the 50% bar to throw Microsoft’s make-haste pitch. “You can benchmark yourself. Where are you at today in your upgrade to Windows 10? Are you half-way through? If you’re not, you’re behind the rest of the industry. If you’re ahead of that, you’re ahead.”

Elsewhere in the September data, the user share of Windows again fell, shedding three-tenths of a percentage point to 87.6%. The combined share of all macOS and OS X editions accounted for 9.5%, an increase of one-tenth of a point. Linux remained flat at 2.2%.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to visit its clients’ websites. It then tallies the visitor sessions — which are effectively visits to the site, with multiple sessions possible daily — rather than count users, as it once did. Net Applications thus measures activity, although differently than rival metrics sources which sum page views.

Windows by the numbers: August 2018

Windows 10 last month recorded its strongest growth since January, accelerating the timeline when the newer operating system will overtake the venerable Windows 7.

According to analytics company Net Applications, Windows 10 added 1.2 percentage points in August, moving its user share to 37.8% of all personal computers and 43% of those running Windows. (The second number is always larger than the first because Windows never powers all personal computers; in August, it ran 87.8% of the world’s systems, with the rest managed by macOS, Linux or ChromeOS.)

August’s gain was the fourth straight month that Windows 10 added about a point, or more, of user share. Over the May-August period, Windows 10 grew its user share by 4 points, the largest four-month increase since the stretch from November 2017 to February 2018, when the OS grew by 5.4 points.

The steady gains signaled that migrations, those of business users’ PCs in particular, are hitting their stride. Windows 7, while still dominant in the workplace, falls off support in mid-January 2020, little more than 16 months from now. Once it loses support, Windows 7 will no longer receive patches to repair vulnerabilities, exposing the devices that run it to attack and exploitation. For that reason, companies are pushing to purge Windows 7 and replace it with Windows 10.

Windows 7 lost a full percentage point in August, falling to 40.3% of all PCs and 45.9% of those running Windows. That decline was the third largest of the past 12 months, a span when the operating system has shed more than 8 points.

Windows 7 may not yet be on the ropes — it remained the world’s most widely used OS in August — but it’s on the verge of ceding the top spot. Net Applications’ latest data pegged the crossover point — when Windows 10 will run a larger percentage of all Windows PCs than Windows 7 — as October, a month earlier than previous forecasts. The trend lines for Windows 10 and Windows 7 now indicate that in January 2020, when Windows 7 reaches retirement, Windows 10 will run 61% of all Windows systems, with 34% still be powered by Windows 7.

Although Microsoft certainly hopes Windows 7’s demise comes sooner rather than later — the Redmond, Wash. firm can’t sell business customers pricy Microsoft 365 subscriptions until those customers adopt Windows 10 — Net Applications’ data shows that as unlikely.

The last major crossover, when Windows 7’s share became greater than Windows XP’s, happened in August 2012, or 20 months before the latter’s support expired. If the latest crossover occurs as forecast — in October — Windows 10 will top its predecessor 15 months from its forebear’s retirement, or in other words, at a later point in the timeline than did Windows 7.

Other signals are murkier.

Even though there should be a larger fraction of PCs running Windows 7 in January 2020 than there was of Windows XP in April 2014 (34% for Windows 7, 29% for XP), the bottom line for Windows 10 may be stronger than the numbers imply. According to Net Applications’ 12-month trends, at the end of January 2020 Windows 10 will power about 61% of all Windows PCs, a bigger portion than the 54% of all PCs that ran Windows 7 at XP’s retirement.

(The difference seemed to be caused by the addition of Windows 8/8.1 to the OS mix in 2012; at XP’s expiration date, Windows 8/8.1 accounted for 13.5% of all Windows PCs. By the time Windows 7 gasps its last support breath, Windows 8/8.1 will be just a shell, sporting an estimated 5% share of all Windows PCs.)

Elsewhere in the August data, the user share of Windows dropped again, slipping six-tenths of a percentage point to 87.8% and negating July’s gain. The combined share of all macOS and OS X editions accounted for 9.4%, an increase of nearly three-tenths of a point. Linux grew by three-tenths of a point to 2.2%.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to visit its clients’ websites. It then tallies the visitor sessions — which are effectively visits to the site, with multiple sessions possible daily — rather than count users, as it once did. Net Applications thus measures activity, although differently than rival metrics sources which total page views.

Windows by the numbers: July 2018

Windows 10 posted its third strong month of growth in a row in July, putting it on track to overtake the veteran Windows 7 by November.

According to California-based analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10 added nine-tenths of a percentage point in July, posting a user share of 36.6% of all personal computers and 41.4% of those running Windows. (The second number is always larger than the first because Windows never powers 100% of all PCs; in July, it ran 88.4% of the world’s systems.)

July’s increase was the third consecutive month that Windows 10 added close to a percentage point of user share. Over the May-July stretch, Windows 10 gained 2.8 points. That was the largest three-month increase since the November 2017-January 2018 period, when the OS grew by 5 points.

Windows 10 user share’s gains — and at times, losses — show the progress individuals and companies have made in migrating from older operating systems, notably Windows 7, which will fall out of support in mid-January 2020 — fewer than 18 months from now. Once unsupported, Windows 7 will no longer receive security updates to patch vulnerabilities, exposing the OS, devices that run it, and the information on those devices, to attack, exploitation and data theft.

Windows 7 shed half a percentage point in July, slipping to 41.2% of all personal computers and 46.6% of those running Windows. That decline was the third largest in the past six months, a stretch when the OS essentially held its ground, refusing to release its grip on corporate PCs in particular.

The 2009 operating system’s performance over the last year has been more to Microsoft’s liking: Windows 7 lost 7.7 percentage points in the past 12 months. Based on that trend, Computerworld now predicts that Windows 7 will account for 35% of all active Windows editions when support ends in January 2020. At that time, Windows 10 should power nearly 59% of all Windows laptop and desktop PCs.

Net Applications’ latest numbers made sure that the crossover point for Windows 10 — when the newer OS will run a higher percentage of all Windows PCs than the older edition — stayed in November. The trend lines for Windows 10 and Windows 7 signal that for January 2019, just 12 months from Windows 7’s retirement, Windows 10 will run 47.2% of all Windows systems, while Windows 7 will power 43%.

For Microsoft, the demise of Windows 7 can’t come soon enough. The company has issued numerous edicts meant to motivate customers to drop it for Windows 10, including declining to support it on newer silicon and a failed attempt to cut off support to some users two and a half years early.

More recently, Microsoft urged its business partners and resellers to cash in on the remaining migration from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and claimed the opportunity is worth $100 billion. At Inspire, the company’s annual conference geared toward partners, Microsoft also said that there are 184 million commercial PCs running Windows 7 across the world (excepting the massive market that is the People’s Republic of China).

Microsoft’s number is just a fraction of the latest estimates of Windows 7’s footprint calculated by Computerworld using Net Applications’ July data; that calculation pegged Windows 7 worldwide consumer and commercial number at just under 700 million PCs. The commercial side would be approximately 385 million using the long-accepted 55%-45% ratio of commercial/consumer PCs. Yet even that reduced number would be more than twice Microsoft’s, raising questions about whether China has 200 million commercial Windows 7 PCs, or whether Computerworld‘s figure is off the mark. Presumably, Microsoft’s number is the most accurate since it’s gleaned from machine-to-Microsoft telemetry.

Microsoft is eager for customers to dump Windows 7 for numerous reasons, but one is directly related to the company’s bottom line. Microsoft’s long-term strategy emphasizes subscriptions to monetize its products and services. In hindsight, Windows 10 seems designed for software-by-subscription; Windows 10’s rapid development and release tempo, notably its twice-annual feature upgrading, is a key part of the subscription pitch. Microsoft can’t sell business customers such subs as Microsoft 365 until those customers adopt Windows 10.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ data, the user share of Windows overall climbed six-tenths of a percentage point to 88.4%, while the combined share of all macOS and OS X editions accounted for 9.1%, a decline increase of six-tenths of a point. Linux, whose fans aggressively tout the open-source OS as a desktop alternative to Windows, stayed flat in July at 1.9%.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to visit its clients’ websites. It then tallies the visitor sessions — which are effectively visits to the site, with multiple sessions possible daily — rather than count users, as it once did. Net Applications thus measures activity, although differently than rival metrics sources which total page views.

Windows by the numbers: June 2018

Windows 10 last month for the first time passed the 40% milestone, but adoption still lagged behind the venerable Windows 7, which refused to budge from its dominant spot.

According to California-based analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10 added a full percentage point in June, accounting for 35.7% of the user share of all personal computers and 40.4% of all those running Windows last month. (The second number is larger than the first because Windows powered 87.9% of all PCs, not 100%.)

The 40.4% represented an estimated 606 million Windows personal computers, calculated using Microsoft’s oft-cited number of 1.5 billion Windows PCs worldwide. Microsoft’s most recent claim for Windows 10 was that the operating system was on nearly “700 million … connected devices,” a statistic it touted in early May. However, Microsoft counts not just PCs, but also Xbox gaming consoles, tablets and a small number of Windows-powered smartphones, which run Windows 10.

Even the 700 million figure, give or take a few million, fell short of the target Microsoft set itself in May 2015, months before Windows 10’s debut, when then-head of Windows, Terry Myerson, said, “Our goal is that within two to three years of Windows 10’s release there will be one billion devices running Windows 10.”

Little more than a year later, however, Microsoft disavowed the 1 billion figure and blamed the expected shortfall on the in-serious-decline Windows 10 smartphone business. But industry analysts pointed to other factors that made the billion-or-bust target unachievable, including a long decline in global PC shipments.

While Windows 10 posted an impressive gain in June — the largest since January — contrary to expectations, Windows 7 lost little. The 2009 OS dropped half a tenth of a percentage point last month, ending with a user share of 41.7% of all personal computers and 47.3% of all those running Windows.

By Net Applications’ numbers, the growth of Windows 10 came at the expense of Windows 8 and 8.1 (which contracted by four-tenths of a point) and the ancient Windows XP (which fell by nearly a full percentage point).

So, while the increase in Windows 10 was good news for Microsoft, the stubbornness of Windows 7 was not. As the end of support for Windows 7 approaches — it is now 18 months away — the forecast remains cloudy. Computerworld currently predicts that, based on Windows’ past 12 months, Windows 7 will account for more than 36% of all active Windows editions in January 2020. At that time, Windows 10 should power nearly 60% of all Windows laptop and desktop PCs.

Net Applications’ latest numbers placed the crossover point for Windows 10 — when the newer OS will run a larger percentage of all Windows PCs than the older edition — in November. The trend lines for Windows 10 and Windows 7 signal that for January 2019, just 12 months from Windows 7’s retirement, Windows 10 will run 47.7% of all Windows systems, while Windows 7 will power 43.7%.

Microsoft’s own Windows 10 claims show an adoption acceleration, although with so few data points, that conclusion is on shaky ground. According to the Redmond, Wash. company, it took 159 days to push Windows 10 from 600 million to 700 million, or 44 fewer days than it took Windows 10 to go from 500 million to 600 million. (The shift from 500 million to 600 million took just 23 fewer days than from 400 million to 500 million.)

For Microsoft, the demise of Windows 7 can’t come soon enough. The company has issued several edicts to cajole and convince customers to drop it for Windows 10, including declining to support it on newer silicon and a failed attempt to cut off support to some users two and a half years early.

Microsoft’s stated motivations for such decisions — that Windows 7 is no longer good enough, secure enough, fast enough, to work on today’s hardware or solve today’s problems — may not be the whole story. For instance, Microsoft’s long-term strategy emphasizes subscriptions to monetize its products and services; Windows 10, unlike its forerunners (including Windows 7) was designed for frequent updating, a key component of the appeal of software-by-subscription.

Nor does Microsoft want to be embarrassed by large-scale attacks against Windows 7 once it halts security updates to all but those who fork over money for an extension. If the firm had a say, there would be no PCs running Windows 7 after January 14, 2020, the support cut-off. That’s not going to happen. From all evidence available today, Windows 7 will, in fact, be more widely in use at its retirement than was Windows XP, which powered 29% of all Windows personal computers at its April 2014 end-of-support.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ data, the user share of Windows overall dropped by approximately half a percentage point to 87.9%, while the combined share of all macOS and OS X editions accounted for 9.7%, an increase of seven-tenths of a point. Linux, whose loyalists have aggressively touted the open-source OS for decades as a desktop alternative to Windows, recorded a one-tenth percentage point loss in June to 1.9%, returning the OS to the underside of the 2% bar.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to visit its clients’ websites. It then tallies the visitor sessions — which are effectively visits to the site, with multiple sessions possible daily — rather than count users, as it once did. Net Applications thus measures activity, although differently than rival metrics sources that focus on page views.

Windows by the numbers: May 2018

A kind of sanity returned to Windows’ status in May as the outgoing Windows 7 finally dropped some significant user share while Windows 10 padded its tally.

According to U.S.-based analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 7 sloughed off 1.8 percentage points last month, accounting for 41.8% of the user share of all personal computers and 47.3% of all those running Windows in May. (The second number is larger than the first because Windows powered 88.4% of all PCs, not 100%.)

May’s decline was the largest in nearly two years, excepting a late-2017 reset when Net Applications purged its data of criminal bot traffic.

The change from past months was dramatic: In both March and April, Windows 7 gained ground, exactly the opposite of what Microsoft wants to see as it pushes customers to adopt Windows 10 and rid themselves of the older Windows 7.

Meanwhile, Windows 10 increased its user share last month by nine-tenths of a percentage point to reach 34.7% of all PCs, and 39.3% of all Windows personal computers. That, too, was in contrast to the two months prior, during which Windows 10 backtracked by a total of eight-tenths of a point.

The news for Microsoft may have been good in May, but long term, the outlook is still unsettled. Basing a forecast on Windows’ past 12 months movement, Computerworld estimates that Windows 7 will account for nearly 35% of all active Windows editions in January 2020. At that time, Windows 10 should power 57% of all Windows laptop and desktop PCs.

The latest numbers advanced the cross-over point for Windows 10 — when the newer OS will run a larger percentage of all Windows PCs than the older edition — from February 2019 (using April’s numbers) to November 2018. The latest trend line for the two operating systems shows that at the end of this year, just 12 months from Windows 7’s retirement, Windows 10 will run 45.6% of all Windows systems, while Windows 7 will power 43.2%.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ data, the user share of Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 — long combined by Computerworld — stayed steady in May at 6.5% of all personal computers and 7.3% of those PCs running a Windows flavor. The 2012 (and for Windows 8.1, 2013) operating system accounted for about the same fraction of last month’s Windows-based online activity as the ancient Windows XP, which still held a 5% user share.

Within a year, Windows 8/8.1 should drop below 5%, another confirmation that the OS was a Microsoft flops. The dramatically-different Windows 8/8.1 never caught on, peaking in November 2014 at around 18%, or several percentage points lower than the top mark of 2007’s much-more-derided Windows Vista.

Also, in May, user share for Apple’s macOS fell by two-tenths of a percentage point, to 9%, after climbing almost that same amount in April. Linux, whose loyalists have perennially touted the open-source OS as the cure to the world’s ills, recorded a one-tenth percentage point boost in May, returning to the plus side of 2% after two months below that bar.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to visit its clients’ websites. It then tallies the visitor sessions — which are effectively visits to the site, with multiple sessions possible daily — rather than count only users, as it once did. Net Applications thus measures activity most of all, although differently than rival metrics sources which focus on page views.

Windows by the numbers: April 2018

The status of both Windows 7 and Windows 10 remained muddled in April, an analytics vendor said this week, with their expected progress — Windows 7 in decline, 10 on the rise — again upended.

According to California-based Net Applications, Windows 7 added more than a tenth of a percentage point of user share — an estimate of the portion of all PCs powered by that operating system — in April, ending the month on 43.6% of the world’s PCs and on 49.3% of all systems running a flavor of Windows. (The second number is larger than the first because Windows accounted for 88.4% of all operating systems, not 100%.)

Meanwhile, Windows 10 was flat last month, accounting for 33.8% of all personal computer operating systems and 38.2% of all those running Windows.

Net Applications’ latest data resembled that of March, when the metrics company said Windows 10 had dropped by the largest-ever amount and the should-be-disappearing Windows 7 had added the largest amount since the middle of 2015, before Windows 10 appeared.

What in the world is going on?

While it’s possible that the numbers reflect a real-world re-adoption of Windows 7 and a retirement of Windows 10 machines, that’s unlikely. Instead, the numbers reflect yet another reset on the part of Net Applications, which purged bot traffic from its data in November and repeated the effort more recently, in February.

Both times, Net Applications purged the bot traffic because it muddled the results. “Bots can cause significant skewing of data,” Net Applications explained last year. “We have seen situations where traffic from certain large countries is almost completely bot traffic. In other countries, ad fraudsters generate traffic that spoofs certain technologies in order to generate high-value clicks. Or, they heavily favor a particular browser or platform.”

As the company hinted, bots are usually deployed by criminals and hucksters, who program the tools to mimic human online behavior for ad click-fraud purposes.

In the end, Net Applications has argued, bot-free data is more accurate because it’s a measurement of what real users are doing, not what scammers pretending to be users are doing.

Unlike November’s bots-be-gone reset, February’s was not kind to Microsoft. Last year’s purge dumped a large portion of Windows 7’s user share and added to Windows 10’s, news that fit with Microsoft’s message that customers were rapidly ditching the old and adopting the new. But February’s flipped the script.

Basing its forecast on the 12-month average of Windows’ trends, Computerworld now estimates that Windows 7 will account for almost 42% of all active Windows editions in January 2020. At that time, Windows 10 should power approximately 56% of all Windows laptop and desktop PCs.

The altered numbers pushed back the cross-over point for Windows 10 — when the newer OS will run a larger percentage of all Windows PCs than the older edition — from December 2018 (using March’s numbers) to February 2019. The latest trend line for the two operating systems shows that at the end of this year, just 12 months from Windows 7’s retirement, Windows 10 will run 45% of all Windows systems, while Windows 7 will still be on 47%.

Windows 7’s refusal to quickly depart now looks not just embarrassing for Microsoft — the company wants to move customers to Windows 10 as soon as possible — but also potentially dangerous.

When Windows XP exited support in April 2014, about 29% of all Windows PCs still ran the retired OS. If Windows 7 is even more prevalent, as the data now signals, there will be a greater chance that hackers will successfully target the unpatched operating system. That will put pressure on Microsoft, much more pressure than it faced with XP, to extend Windows 7 support for corporate customers beyond the current January 2020 deadline. In turn, a support extension would disrupt the move to Windows 10, on which Microsoft has high expectations for delivering steady subscription revenue.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ data, the user share for Apple’s macOS rose by two-tenths of a percentage point, to 9.2%, after falling more than a full point in March.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to visit its clients’ websites. It then tallies the visitor sessions — which are effectively visits to the site, with multiple sessions possible daily — rather than count each user a maximum of once per day, as it once did.

The company also accounts for the size of each country’s online population to better estimate share in regions where it lacks analytics customers, such as China and India.

Windows by the numbers: March 2018

Just when it looked like Windows 10 was gathering momentum, the operating system last month sloughed off its biggest-ever chunk of user share, new data showed.

According to analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10 lost eight-tenths of a percentage point in user share — an estimate of the portion of all PCs powered by that operating system — during March, ending the month on 33.3% of the world’s PCs and 37.4% of all systems running a Microsoft edition. (The second number is larger than the first because Windows accounted for 88.9% of all operating systems, not 100%.)

The downturn was the largest ever for Windows 10, which has been trending up since its mid-2015 debut. That movement has not been a straight line, as March’s dip showed, but it has been impressive, averaging more than eight-tenths of a point monthly.

It’s certain that Windows 10 will again post gains — there is no other reasonable alternative to Windows 7, which Microsoft will retire in January 2020 — and that last month was a blip. But the screeching stop was accompanied by an even larger increase in Windows 7’s user share: The veteran OS added 1.8 percentage points to its tally, ending March with 43.4%, slightly more than Net Applications had pegged it at in November 2017.

Windows 7’s uptick was bad news on multiple fronts.

First, if accurate — and there’s no guarantee any third-party measurement is — then Windows 7 will retain a larger number of users than earlier anticipated when it slips off the support list in 21 months. Using the 12-month average of Windows 7’s share movements, Computerworld now forecasts that the 2009 OS will account for about 38% of all active Windows editions in January 2020. At that time, Windows 10 should power approximately 56% of all Windows laptop and desktop PCs.

The latest prediction for Windows 7’s end-of-support remainder was three percentage points higher than that of last month, which was calculated the same way.

Second, the boost to Windows 7 pushes back the cross-over for Windows 10 — when it will power a larger percentage of all Windows PCs than Windows 7 — from August (as of February’s data from Net Applications) to December (using March’s numbers). The trend line for the two operating systems now indicates that at the end of this year — and just over 12 months from Windows 7’s retirement — Windows 10 will run 45.1% of all Windows systems, while Windows 7 will be on 44.8%.

And third, the large jump in user share for Windows 7 immediately raises suspicion that the measurement was flawed, perhaps because fraudulent bot traffic — scoured by Net Applications from its data last year — has returned with a vengeance. If so, it would call into question the entirety of Net Applications’ user share estimates.

All of those would point to a failure of sorts for Microsoft, because it would mean there will be many more PCs running Windows 7 in January 2020 than were on Windows XP when that OS exited support in April 2014. During the latter month, XP accounted for about 29% of all Windows editions. Since then, Microsoft has waged an unprecedented campaign on the part of Windows 10, using both strong-arm tactics and a wealth of new tools, to persuade and push customers into migration.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ data, the user share for Apple’s macOS plummeted a full percentage point to 8.9%, making moot its recent charge toward the once-fanciful 10% milestone for the company’s Macintosh line.

Windows by the numbers: February 2018

A small boost in Windows 10’s user share over the last several months is likely a signal that businesses have finally begun migrating to the new operating system, an analysis of new data shows.

Data published yesterday by California-based Net Applications said that Windows 10 actually slipped two-tenths of a percentage point in user share — the portion of all personal computer owners who ran the operating system — during February, ending the month powering 34.1% of the world’s PCs and 38.9% of all systems running an edition of Microsoft’s OS. (The second number is larger than the first because Windows accounted for 87.7% of all operating systems, not 100%.)

But the downturn, the first since February 2017, was certainly an outlier, as Windows 10 has been on an upward climb since its mid-2015 debut. That trend has not been a straight line, however, but one showing 10’s increases by fits and starts.

By graphing Windows 10’s user share increases on a six-month trailing basis — each data point represents the total gain over the previous six months — it becomes clear that after a pair of adoption waves that crested in January 2015 and August 2106, the operating system fell into a trough that reached bottom in February 2017.

(The timelines of the crests were not coincidental; the first was fueled by early adopters switching to Windows 10 from Windows 7 and 8.1 using Microsoft’s free upgrade deal, and the second triggered by that free upgrade’s expiration in mid-2016.)

In the past year, Windows 10’s growth has, if not surged, then clawed its way out of the February 2017 hole. The six-month trailing numbers climbed, peaked, then slumped, three different times in the intervening 12 months. But each time the trough wasn’t as low as the one before, while the recovering peak always exceeded its predecessor.

For instance, January 2018’s six-month trailing number was 4.8 percentage points, the highest since November 2016.

Although it’s unclear what percentages of enterprise PCs contribute to Net Applications’ data — some corporate systems rarely if ever browse the wider web, instead remaining within a company’s intranet perimeter — the rebounding of Windows 10’s growth can safely be assigned to business machines migrating to the newer OS. (For one, consumer PC purchases continue their precipitous multi-year decline, and two, consumers who planned to upgrade from Windows 7 and 8.1 did so while the free offer lasted.)

Because businesses have a deadline to meet — the retirement of Windows 7 on Jan. 14, 2020 — it’s no surprise that the switch to Windows 10 has picked up momentum. It would have been an incredible surprise if growth had not increased, what with the pressure to flush Windows 7 from corporate networks.

But will those companies make the due date?

Using the 12-month average of Windows 7’s user share decline, Computerworld forecasts that the aging OS will still account for about 35% of all active Windows editions in January 2020. (At that time, Windows 10 should power approximately 63% of all Windows laptop and desktop PCs.)

The projected 35% would be a failure of sorts for Microsoft, because it would mean there were more PCs running Windows 7 than when Windows XP exited support in April 2014. That month, XP accounted for approximately 29% of all Windows editions.

Computerworld still forecasts the cross-over for Windows 10 — when it will power a larger percentage of all Windows PCs than Windows 7 — as August of this year. The 12-month trends for the two operating systems now indicate that at the end of that month, Windows 10 will run 45% of all Windows systems, while Windows 7 will be on 44.6%.

(Another analytics data provider, Ireland’s StatCounter, pegged January 2018 as the moment when Windows 7 handed the baton to Windows 10.)

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ data, the user share for Apple’s macOS stayed stable at 9.9%, within spitting distance of a once-unthinkable 10% milestone for the company’s 34-year-old Macintosh line.

IDG/Gregg Keizer

Windows by the numbers: January 2018

Windows 10 added more user share in January than in any month since mid-2016, according to web analytics vendors Net Applications, the company said last week.

Data published Feb. 1 by the California-based Net Applications showed that Windows 10 had accumulated 1.4 percentage points of user share — the portion of all personal computer owners who ran the operating system — during January, ending the month powering 34.3% of the world’s PCs and 39.1% of all those systems running a flavor of Microsoft’s OS. (The second number is larger than the first because Windows accounted for 88.8% of all operating systems, not 100%.)

Windows 10’s increase was its largest since August 2016, if the November 2017 drop of 2.7 points is ignored. The latter was part of an across-the-board revamp of Net Applications’ data, designed to purge the numbers of bogus traffic originating from criminals’ “bots,” and thus was not proof of a sudden rush to Windows 10.

Meanwhile, Windows 7, the still-stalwart OS of the enterprise, ditched seven-tenths of a percentage point in January to post a user share of 42.4% of all PCs, equivalent to 48.3% of those running Windows.

The movements of Windows 7 and Windows 10 are of paramount importance to Microsoft at the moment, as the company plans to stop supporting the former in January 2020. During the next two years, Microsoft will push, nudge, prod, exhort, even threaten, users to get them to dump Windows 7 and move to Windows 10. How well the firm accomplishes that task will affect both its bottom line and reputation.

Using the 12-month averages of Windows 7’s and Windows 10’s user share changes, Computerworld revised its cross-over forecast. That cross-over — when Windows 10’s share of all Windows PCs exceeds Windows 7’s — may come as early as August, a month before the previous estimate. According to the 12-month trend, Windows 10’s share that month will reach 41.3%, while Windows 7’s will slip to 41.2%.

In this linear projection, Windows 7 will boast a user share of more than 32% in January 2020. At that time, Windows 10 should power approximately 59% of all Windows laptop and desktop PCs.

However, it is unlikely that the real expansion of Windows 10’s share and the diminished pool of Windows 7 users will follow this model: Operating systems aren’t adopted or discarded in such a straightway fashion. Instead, the migration rate often accelerates as the end-of-life date for the older OS approaches.

Even so, Net Applications’ data illustrates the problem that Windows 7’s stubbornness represents. If the forecast is in any way close to accurate, hundreds of millions of machines will be running Windows 7 come January 14, 2020, the day Microsoft serves up the final security update for the OS. In turn, that could create enormous opportunities for hackers able to exploit vulnerabilities that will never be patched.

This latest forecast claimed that Windows 7’s remainder-at-retirement will be larger than XP’s at its official demise in April 2014. Then, Windows XP accounted for about 29% of all copies of Windows worldwide, or several percentage points lower than the current estimate for Windows 7.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ January data, the user share for Apple’s macOS climbed by nine-tenths of a percentage point, an increase on a scale not seen since April 2016 (again, with the exception of the November 2017 bot scrubbing). The boost put macOS at an even 10% of the global personal computer operating system user share, a milestone for Apple and the 34-year-old Macintosh.

Another data source, Ireland’s StatCounter, painted a different picture.

According to StatCounter, Windows 10’s usage share — a measurement of activity rather than of users — exceeded Windows 7’s for January, edging out the older operating system for the first time. StatCounter recorded Windows 10’s usage share at 42.8%, Windows 7’s at 41.9%.

StatCounter ballyhooed the cross-over moment. “This is a breakthrough for Microsoft,” said Aodhan Cullen, the company’s CEO, in a statement. But Cullen also noted that Windows 7 “retained loyalty especially amongst business users,” implying that while 10 now has the upper hand, there are large numbers of machines that still face an OS upgrade before 2020.

IDG/Data: Net Applications

Windows by the numbers: December 2017

Windows 10 will replace the aged Windows 7 as the most popular version of Microsoft’s operating system in September, according to the rise and fall of the two editions’ user shares.

But that won’t be the end of Windows 7. Those same trends argue that when Microsoft declares Windows 7 obsolete — and thus, no longer provides it with security updates — the operating system will still account for more than a third of all copies of Windows then in use.

Those projections are derived from data published by analytics vendor Net Applications of Aliso Viejo, Calif., which on Monday revealed the December numbers for Windows 7, Windows 10 and other OSes. Net Applications’ user share is an estimate of the percentage of the world’s personal computers powered by a specific operating system.

Using the 12-month averages of Windows 7’s and Windows 10’s user share changes, Computerworld projects the fall of the former and the rise of the latter over the next two years.

(Windows 7’s support officially expires on Jan. 14, 2020, or just a tad more than two years from now.)

The cross-over moment — when Windows 10’s share of all Windows PCs exceeds Windows 7’s — will come in September 2018. According to the 12-month trend, Windows 10’s share that month will reachj 45.7%, while Windows 7’s will skip to 45.5%. After September, the Windows 10 and Windows 7 lines will continue to diverge as the first keeps climbing and the second keeps dropping.

In that linear progression, Windows 7 will sport a robust user share of nearly 39% in January 2020. At that time, Windows 10 should power approximately 61% of all Windows laptop and desktop PCs.

It’s unlikely that reality will mimic this simplistic model; operating systems aren’t adopted or discarded in such a straightway fashion. Instead, the migration rate from old to new usually accelerates as the end-of-life date approaches. Or migration speeds up, slows down, then speeds up again.

Take Windows XP as an example.

In the final 12 months before its 2014 retirement from support, from May 2013 to April 2014, XP’s user share fell by an average of 1 percentage point per month. But in the 12 months prior to that stretch — May 2012 to April 2013 — its share slipped by an average of just 0.65 points, signaling that XP dumping accelerated in the home stretch. (To really mix things up, in the 12 months from May 2011 to April 2012, or the third-to-last year of support, XP’s share plummeted by an average of 0.81 percentage points, or at a rate about midway between that of the two following years. Go figure.)

By this forecast, Windows 7’s rate of decline, call it the speed of the get-off-Windows-7-train, won’t be fast enough to zero out the OS by the time Microsoft pulls the security patch plug. That’s not a surprise, as the 2009 operating system has lagged behind the pace of Windows XP’s migration train for quite some time.

But the Net Applications’ numbers hint at a potentially huge problem, because the portion of Windows PCs projected to remain on Windows 7 come January 2020 is significantly larger than what remained on XP at its retirement and is also larger than what Computerworld calculated two full years before Windows XP’s deadline.

In April 2014, when Microsoft rescinded Windows XP support, that version accounted for about 29% of all copies of Windows worldwide. Currently, the best-guess for Windows 7 at its end-of-support is a full 10 percentage points higher.

But that’s not even the half of it.

In 2012, two years before XP shuffled off the support scene, Computerworld, using the same 12-month trend that produced a 39% user share for Windows 7 in January 2020, figured that XP would have a mere 17% in user share at retirement. The fact that Computerworld‘s back-of-the-envelope forecast for XP was off by 12 percentage points does not make for much confidence in the 39% mark for Windows 7 in 24 months.

In other words, today’s calculation may be significantly lower than the reality of 2020.

Microsoft has at times resorted to some of the same name calling it used in 2012 for Windows XP when it has talked about the venerable Windows 7, which remains the stock enterprise OS. A year ago, for example, the head of Microsoft Germany said Windows 7 was “long outdated” and argued that the operating system did not meet “the high security requirements of IT departments.”

Expect Microsoft to ramp up that line of attack as Jan. 14 approaches, when Microsoft is almost certain to remind customers that the Windows 7 drop-dead date is two years away and closing fast.

Windows by the numbers: November 2017

Windows 7 dropped below the 50% user share mark in November, finally ceding the operating system majority on Windows PCs.

Ironically, the decline of Windows 7 was good news for Microsoft, which wants customers to move to the newer Windows 10 as soon as possible.

According to analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 7’s November global user share fell 3.5 percentage points, ending the month at 43.1%. November’s plunge was the largest ever for the OS that debuted in 2009.

When only Windows personal computers were included in the calculation, Windows 7 ran 48.8% of all Windows machines, a month-over-month drop of 2.6 points. (The Windows-only percentage is larger because Windows powers 88.4% of the world’s systems, not 100%; the remainder run macOS or a version of Linux.)

In Net Applications’ tracking, November was the first month since Windows 7’s mid-2015 peak during that it failed to account for more than half of all Windows editions.

While Windows 7’s November tumble was dramatic, it was as much a push of a big red reset button by Net Applications as proof of massive numbers suddenly fleeing the veteran OS.

As it has periodically in the past, Net Applications reworked how it tracks operating systems, browsers and other metrics of interest to businesses. In a message appended to a refreshed website, the company explained that it had rewritten its “entire collection and aggregation infrastructure to address” misleading data.

The culprits, said Net Applications, were bots, the software-based automatons that mimic humans on the Web and are typically deployed by criminals to boost site traffic so they can cash in on various click fraud scams.

“Bots can cause significant skewing of data,” Net Applications acknowledged. “We have seen situations where traffic from certain large countries is almost completely bot traffic. In other countries, ad fraudsters generate traffic that spoofs certain technologies in order to generate high-value clicks. Or, they heavily favor a particular browser or [operating system] platform.”

Though some may immediately blame the majors shifts in OS user share on Net Applications’ scrubbing its data of bot traffic, that would be only a knee-jerk reaction. “Please note: This dataset is separate from and replaces the legacy data,” the company said, making clear that it had eradicated bot traffic from past data, too, not just the numbers from November.

In other words, Windows 7 was declining faster than thought all along.

Under Net Applications’ new methodology, for example, Windows 7’s user share for October was 43%, or 3.6 points lower than the firm called it using the older, bot-plagued data. The same held true in July, when the new bots-be-gone number (46.1%) was lower than the old bots-still-here number (48.6%). Those differences jibed with Net Applications’ explanation that bot traffic caused off-kilter results; for criminals’ click fraud schemes, it made sense to disguise their bots as Windows 7 users, because inflating those numbers would be easiest to hide.

Assuming that Net Applications cleaned out all or most of the dodgy bot traffic, the numbers should now be more accurate. They certainly will be more welcome at Microsoft.

That’s because the new calculations show Windows 7’s decline ahead of the pace set by Windows XP. With 25 months to go before its April 2014 retirement, XP accounted for 50.7% of all Windows PCs, or nearly two points higher than Windows 7’s share in November. If Windows 7’s drive toward zero is faster than XP’s, it signals customers may be moving promptly to Windows 10 — avoiding a repeat of the panicked final months before support for Windows XP expired.

In fact, Net Applications’ bot-less data made that case: Windows 10 ran on 32% of all personal computers last month, a 2.7-point increase, and powered 36.2% of all Windows PCs. It was the first time that Windows 10 accounted for a third or more of the Windows operating systems worldwide.

But unlike Windows 7 vs. XP, the comparison between Windows 10 and Windows 7 still favors the latter. At the same post-launch point in Windows 7’s lifetime, it had captured an amazing 41.5% of the globe’s Windows devices, or more than 5 percentage points greater than Windows 10 at November’s mark. In other words, Windows 10 continues to lag behind the adoption rate set by Windows 7, and contrary to Microsoft’s claims, is not its fastest-growing version.

Of the other Windows editions monitored by Net Applications, Windows XP accounted for 6.5% of Windows PCs (down), Windows Vista at an almost-invisible 0.5% (stable) and the Windows 8/8.1 combination at about 8.1% (up for some reason).

Net Applications estimates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers used to visit clients’ websites. It counts the various operating systems listed in those strings, then weights the results by the size of each country’s online population to better reflect regions where it lacks large numbers of customers.

IDG/Data: Net Applications

Windows by the numbers: October 2017

Windows 7 surrendered a few more users last month as its share of the overall Windows universe slipped a bit closer to 50%.

But if the veteran operating system were a person, it would be that party guest who stayed well past welcome, lingering long after everyone else has left, after the hosts have, in fact, gone to bed. And there Windows 7 would sit, talking without a listener, making itself at home, feet up on the coffee table.

According to metrics vendor Net Applications, Windows 7’s user share in October was 46.6%, a decline of six-tenths of a percentage point. More notable during these times of migration, the operating system ran 51.4% of all Windows machines during the same stretch, a month-to-month drop of seventh-tenths of a point. (The second percentage is larger because Windows was detected on 90.8% of the world’s PCs, not 100%; the remainder ran macOS or a Linux flavor.)

October’s decline was only half that of September, but was still the third largest of 2017.

The continued weakening of Windows 7’s user share — five months of declines and counting — is a promising sign, as the operating systems faces a deadline: Microsoft has set Windows 7’s retirement for Jan. 14, 2020, now little more than 26 months away. The faster Windows 7 relinquishes its user share, the less the chance that businesses will find themselves running unpatched, and thus, vulnerable, machines. No one wants a repeat of the panicky last few months of Windows XP’s lifespan, when companies blew through IT budgets scrambling to purge the obsolete OS.

Yet Windows 7 remains behind the pace set by XP . With 26 months to go before its April 2014 retirement, XP accounted for 49.4% of all Windows PCs, or two points lower than Windows 7’s share in October. Things could be worse: In August, Windows 7 was three points behind XP’s tempo. But the lack of progress in matching XP’s slide toward irrelevance must be disheartening to Microsoft, which continues to sing Windows 10’s praises, and even assert that Windows 7 is not only old and tired, but simply not up to the tasks required of it.

Meanwhile, Windows 10 did see a bump in user share last month of two-tenths of a point, ending October at 29.3%. When only Windows systems are counted, its share of that pool was 32.8%, within shouting distance of the one-in-three milestone. Computerworld calculated that, with the 12-month trend in Net Applications’ data, Windows 10 should pass the 33.3% line during December.

But comparisons of today versus the past again went poorly for Microsoft when putting Windows 10 head-to-head against Windows 7. At the same post-launch point in Windows 7’s lifetime, that version had captured a 36.4% share of all PCs and a remarkable 39.5% of the devices running Windows. In other words, Windows 10 has lagged behind the adoption clip set by Windows 7.

Of the other Windows flavors tracked by Net Applications, Windows XP stood at 7.1% of Windows PCs (up slightly), Windows Vista at an almost-invisible 0.5% (stable) and the Windows 8/8.1 flop combination at 7% (down significantly).

Net Applications estimates share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers used to visit websites, then counting up the various operating systems listed in those strings. It then weights the results by the size of each country’s online population to account for regions where it lacks large numbers of analytics customers.

IDG

Windows by the numbers: September 2017

If Windows 7 were an actor, it would be a past-prime stage star who overstayed his curtain call and refused to acknowledge his understudy who, just the night before, had wowed the critics and charmed the audience.

Last month, though, Windows 7 ceded a tiny pool of the limelight to that understudy, Windows 10, giving the crowd hope that the aging actor would finally figure out he should exit, stage left, before the theater’s manager got the hook and dragged him off the boards.

According to metrics vendor Net Applications, Windows 7’s user share in September was 48.4%, a decline of 1.2 percentage points. More importantly, the operating system ran 52.1% of all Windows machines during the same stretch, a month-over-month drop of 1.3 points. (The second percentage is larger because Windows was detected on 90.6% of the world’s PCs, not 100%; the remainder ran macOS or some kind of Linux.) This was the largest decline of Windows 7’s user share — an estimate of the percentage of the world’s personal computers powered by the OS — since July 2016.

Encouraging? Yes, if only because Microsoft has set Windows 7’s retirement for January 2020, a date that is quickly approaching. The slower Windows 7 declines in user share, the greater the chance that panicked businesses will overspend to replace the operating system with Windows 10, causing a repeat of the chaotic end times of Windows XP.

Even with September’s share erosion, Windows 7 remained behind the pace set by XP six years ago. But it did close some of the gap. At the same interval before its April 2014 retirement, with 27 months left to go, XP accounted for 51.3% of all Windows PCs, less than a point lower than Windows 7’s share. The month prior, Windows 7 had been three points behind XP’s tempo.

Other sources put Windows 7 in a similar spot. Irish metrics company StatCounter said that Windows 7 powered 44% of all Windows personal computers last month, a 1.1 percentage point dip from the month prior. Meanwhile, the Digital Analytics Program (DAP) also portrayed a downturn for Windows 7. DAP, which tallies visits to more than 4,000 websites maintained by U.S. government agencies, put Windows 7’s September share of all Windows at 48.1%, off over two percentage points from August’s 50.8%.

Windows 10 added 1.1 percentage points of user share in September — three times the increase of the month before — to account for 29.1% of all PCs and 32.1% of all Windows desktops and laptops. By Computerworld‘s latest calculation — using the 12-month trends as shown by Net Applications — Windows 10 will be on a third of all Windows PCs by the end of October.

Net Applications, StatCounter and DAP estimate share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers used to visit websites, then counting up the various operating systems listed in those strings.

IDG / Net Applications

Windows 7 again retained its majority user share in August, setting the stage for a potentially chaotic migration to its successor, Windows 10, over the next 28 months.

According to analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 7’s user share in August was 48.4%, a decline of half a percentage point. The veteran operating system, which powers the bulk of enterprise personal computers, ran 53.4% of all Windows machines in the same period. (The second number is larger because Windows was detected on 90.7% of the world’s PCs, not 100%; the remainder ran macOS or one of the many flavors of Linux.)

The problem is that even with a small downturn last month, Windows 7’s share has barely budged since April 2016. In the intervening 16 months, the operating system has gained six-tenths of a percentage point. During the same span of time, other editions have dumped significant user share: Windows 8 and 8.1, for example, unloaded more than 10 points in the same stretch, while the ancient Windows XP dropped 4.6 percentage points.

Windows 10 grew by nearly 13 points over those 16 months.

Windows 7’s refusal to recognize an upcoming retirement — Microsoft will halt all support in January 2020 — meant that it fell even further behind the decline pace set by Windows XP six years ago. At the same mark before its April 2014 retirement, with 28 months left to go, XP accounted for 50.4% of all Windows PCs, about three points lower than Windows 7’s August share.

The difference between Windows 7 and Windows XP at the 29th month mark had been just five-tenths of a percentage point.

Although some analysts have argued that businesses have begun to pack up Windows 7 and deploy Windows 10 — and that the trend will play out more expeditiously than it did when they shifted from XP to 7 — there has been no hint of such in Net Applications’ data.

Other sources put Windows 7 in an even tougher spot. Irish metrics company StatCounter said that Windows 7 powered 54% of all Windows personal computers last month; Windows XP had accounted for just 46.3% of all Windows at the same point in its pre-retirement timeline.

The replacement for Windows 7, the this-OS-is-forever Windows 10, added five-tenths of a percentage point to its share in August — a bit more than half the increase of the month before — to run 28% of all PCs and 30.9% of all Windows desktops and laptops. By Computerworld‘s calculation — using the 12-month trends as shown by Net Applications — Windows 10 will be on a third of all Windows PCs by February 2018.

Net Applications and StatCounter estimate share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers used to visit its clients’ websites, then tallying the various operating systems listed in those strings.

IDG/Net Applications

Windows by the numbers: July 2017

“Stubborn” must be Windows 7’s middle name.

The enterprise-standard operating system held onto its majority market share in July, according to analytics vendor Net Applications, again signaling that it will not go gentle into that good night of the retirement that looms in less than two and a half years.

Last month’s Windows 7 user share — an estimate of the percentage of the world’s personal computers it powers — was 48.9%, said Net Applications, but the operating system ran 53.5% of all Windows machines. (The second number is larger because Windows is on 91.5% of the world’s PCs, not 100%.)

Windows 7’s share has barely stirred in the last 15 months, even as other editions have shifted. Windows 8 and 8.1, for example, jettisoned 10 percentage points in the past year, ending July with a user share of 7.9%. Windows 10 gained more than 12 points in the same stretch, almost a full point in July, reaching a 27.6% share of all personal computers — and a 30.2% share of Windows PCs.

As Windows 7 continued to hang onto more than half the world’s Windows-equipped personal computers, it also continued to lag behind the pace of decline of Windows XP at the same mark before its April 2014 retirement. With 29 months left to go, XP accounted for 53% of all Windows PCs, or a slightly lower percentage than Windows 7 in July.

While analysts have argued that businesses will migrate from Windows 7 to Windows 10 more expeditiously than they did from Windows XP to Windows 7 three to six years ago, there’s no hint of that in Net Applications’ data.

Other sources put Windows 7 in the same predicament. Irish metrics company StatCounter said that Windows 7 powered 45.7% of all Windows personal computers last month; Windows XP had accounted for 41.9% of all Windows at the same point in its pre-retirement timeline.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s replacement, Windows 10, added eight-tenths of a percentage point to its share in July, running 27.6% of all PCs, and 30.2% of all Windows desktops and laptops. By Computerworld‘s calculation — using the 12-month trends as shown by Net Applications — Windows 10 will be on a third of all Windows PCs by January.

Net Applications and StatCounter estimate share by sniffing the browser agent strings of those who visit its clients’ websites, then tallying the various operating systems listed in those strings.

IDG/Data: Net Applications

Windows by the numbers: June 2017

Windows 7 in June easily retained its majority, powering over half of all Windows PCs, more evidence that the entrenched operating system will be difficult to pry from enterprises before its scheduled retirement.

The OS will be struck from Microsoft’s support list in two and a half years, on Jan. 14, 2020.

June’s Windows 7 user share — an estimate of the percentage of the world’s personal computers powered by the eight-year-old operating system — was 49%, according to U.S. analytics company Net Applications. However, Windows 7 ran 53.6% of all Windows machines. (The difference between the two figures stems from the fact that Windows powers 91.5% of the globe’s personal computers, not 100%.)

Windows 7’s share has not budged in the last 12 months, even as other editions have gone through substantial shifts. Windows 8 and 8.1, for example, jettisoned 2.7 percentage points in the past year, ending June with a user share of 7.8%. Windows 10 gained nearly 8 points in the same span, posting a 26.8% share of all personal computers for June — and a 32.8% share of Windows PCs.

Microsoft’s customers, including the bulk of enterprises, may have trouble divesting themselves of Windows 7 before the 2020 deadline if Net Applications’ estimates are on the money. In fact, Windows 7’s decline has fallen behind the pace of Windows XP 30 months before its retirement.

At that time, Windows XP powered 52.3% of all Windows PCs, more than a full point lower than Windows 7’s June user share. Customers’ attempts to eradicate Windows XP by its April 2014 due date failed; at the end of that month, 29% of the world’s Windows personal computers still ran the aged OS. (Even now, about 7.6% of the globe’s Windows PCs run XP; a large portion of them are in China, where nearly one in every five personal computers runs the 2001 OS, often a counterfeited copy.)

By lagging behind XP’s reduction tempo, Windows 7 risks ending its support lifecycle with an even larger fraction of the world’s PCs still relying on what will then be an unpatched operating system. And May’s WannaCry cyber-attack illustrated just how dangerous that can be.

Other data sources portrayed a similar situation for Windows 7. Irish metrics vendor StatCounter said that Windows 7 powered 45.7% of all Windows personal computers last month; Windows XP had accounted for 42.5% of all Windows PC operating systems at the same point in its pre-retirement timeline.

A month ago, Net Applications’ numbers for Windows 7 were virtually the same as XP’s in its run toward a support cutoff. And while StatCounter’s data put Windows 7 behind Windows XP’s tempo of decline in both May and June, the gap in June between the two editions was nearly twice that of May’s.

Net Applications and StatCounter estimate share by sniffing the browser agent strings of those who visit its clients’ websites, then tallying the various operating systems listed in those strings.

Data: Net Applications/IDG

Top web browsers, May 2020

Chrome’s share reached a record high in May, the fifth straight month of gains, a run the browser last enjoyed three years ago.

According to data published Monday by California metrics vendor Net Applications, Chrome’s share in May climbed six-tenths of a percentage point to 69.8%. The browser has been on a run of late, with the previous five months – January to May – putting 3.2 points on Chrome’s ledger. The only other browser to post gains during that stretch – Safari – added a mere two-tenths of a point.

To put Chrome’s position into perspective, no browser has had more than Chrome’s current share since December 2008, when Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) held more than 70% even as it was trending down, under assault from Mozilla’s Firefox. (That month, Chrome, which had debuted only months before, accounted for a tiny 1.4% of all browser share.)

May’s addition changed Chrome’s 12-month forecast, which now predicts the browser will reach 70% this month (June) but will need until December to make 71%. If Chrome breaks the 70% bar, it will become only the third browser to do so, following Netscape Navigator (an ancestor of Firefox) and IE.

It’s unclear how much headroom Chrome has – it seems very unlikely that it can duplicate IE’s crushing dominance of, say, 2005, when that browser had close to a 90% share – but it almost certainly can squeeze a few more points out of the competition. IE has points to give up, not many but at least a couple, while Firefox could easily continue its ruinous slide and slough another two or three percentage points.

As Computerworld has said before, the only threat to Chrome in the near term will be Microsoft’s Edge, the Chrome clone.

Firefox hangs in there

For a second straight month, Firefox held onto its share; the browser ended May with 7.2%, losing a statistically insignificant two-hundredths of a point.

May was also the third consecutive month that Firefox sat behind Edge after losing its second-place status in March; the gap between the two grew to six-tenths of a point, an increase, like the month prior, of one-tenth of a percentage point. Unless Edge stumbles badly, it looks like it now has solid lock on second place.

Although Firefox remained flat, Computerworld‘s new forecast – based on the browser’s 12-month average – continued to anticipate a future decline. By that prognosis, Firefox will slide below 7% in July and end the year at 5.9%. That dismal prediction may not come true, of course; in fact, Firefox’s losses over the past six months has been just 40% of that over the last 12, hinting that its decline has slowed.

Mozilla has to be scratching its head, wondering what it has to do to get users on board. In many ways, it’s been the force behind browsers’ emphasis on user privacy, a movement nearly all have gotten behind. Yet it struggles to keep what audience it has, much less grow that.

Edge’s gains make case for Chromiumization

Microsoft’s two browsers – the reworked Edge and run-down IE – combined forces to lose seven-tenths of a percentage point in May, posting a share of 12.5% at its end.

All of that was due to IE, as Edge added a tenth of a point to its total in May, reaching 7.9%, a record for the just-overhauled browser. Meanwhile, IE surrendered eight-tenths of a percentage point, the most since January, to drag its share to 4.6%, the first time that browser has dipped under the 5% mark in the 15 years for which Computerworld has records of Net Applications’ numbers.

While IE’s current share of under 5% may be an undercount – Computerworld remains convinced that metrics vendors like Net Applications have little insight into enterprises, where a single IP external address may mask many internal IP addresses – it’s difficult to know just exactly where the ancient browser stands. It’s clear Microsoft believes it important enough to cater to – seen in the IE mode baked into the Chromium-based Edge – but whether that’s because of popularity inside corporations or just the power of some few very important customers cannot be judged from outside Redmond.

Computerworld‘s latest forecast has IE’s share evaporating to 1.5% in less than a year, which seems unlikely at first glance. Yet the browser, for all its agelessness, will vanish at some point.

Edge’s May was the six straight month of increases, and with 1.95 points added to it during that time, its largest gain since the first half of 2016 when the browser was nearly brand new. From the limited data available – since the end of January, Edge climbed by a less-than-stellar eight-tenths of a point – it appears that the “Chromiumization” of Edge has, at the least, legitimized that browser (where before it was little more than laughingstock). At its current 12-month average growth rate, Edge would be in double digits – specifically, approximately 10.3% – by this time next year.

It would be a mistake to see that as small potatoes, since no browser other than Chrome currently can boast of a double-digit share.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ data, both Apple’s Safari and Opera software’s Opera remained flat, ending May at 3.9% and 1.1%, respectively.

Net Applications calculates share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers used to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm counts visitor sessions to measure browser activity.

Top web browsers, April 2020

Firefox staved off another ruinous month by remaining stable in April, while Chrome raised its share to a level last seen more than a decade ago by Microsoft’s now largely irrelevant Internet Explorer (IE).

According to data posted Friday by analytics vendor Net Applications, Firefox’s share in April rose very slightly — by less than one-tenth of a percentage point — to 7.3%. It was the first month in the last four in which the browser added share — and more importantly — kept it from dropping below the 7% bar, the milestone not seen since 2005, when Firefox was scratching share from Microsoft’s IE and Google was more than three years away from introducing Chrome.

Firefox remained behind Edge for the second month in a row after ceding second place to Microsoft’s newest browser in March. The gap between them expanded in April by one-tenth of a percentage point to half a point.

Because Firefox remained more or less flat rather than decline as anticipated, Computerworld‘s new forecast — based on the browser’s 12-month average — puts it right at 7% rather than under it at this month’s end. The losses could resume, of course, in which case if they matched the last year’s average, would drop Firefox under 6% by October and leave it at a very dismal 5.3% by year’s end.

Chrome sets record

Chrome climbed by seven-tenths of a percentage point in April, about half what it gained the month before, but it established a record for Google by reaching 69.2%. It was the first time the browser had topped 68% — as it did in March — without slumping the very next month to fall below that level.

In the last 12 months, Chrome has added 3.5 percentage points to its total, the largest change, positive or negative, of any browser during the stretch.

The boost improved Chrome’s 12-month forecast yet again, putting the browser on a linear path of significant growth, considering its dominance of the space. Computerworld‘s prediction now pegs Chrome at above 70% by July and over 71% by November. Only two browsers have accounted for 70% or more of all browser activity since the web’s start: Netscape Navigator (an ancestor of Firefox) and IE. Chrome would join a very selective club.

The last time a browser controlled as much share as Chrome did in April was February 2009, when IE had 69.2%. (The most popular version of IE at the time? IE7, although its lead over IE6 was slim, just a couple of points.)

But can Chrome keep it up? Possibly.

Unlike in 2009, when IE faced a significant rival — Firefox, with approximately 22% of the space — as well as a trio of smaller competitors (Chrome, Apple’s Safari and Opera Software’s Opera), today Chrome’s adversaries are individually weak, none with more than 8%. The way Firefox seems to be headed and the continued inevitable decline and ultimate demise of IE, leaves open more percentage points Chrome may scoop up down the line.

Realistically, the only danger to Chrome anytime soon will be Microsoft’s Edge, ironically a near-clone of Google’s browser.

Edge up, IE down

Microsoft’s browsers, the aged IE and rebuilt Edge, combined to lose three-tenths of a percentage point in April, ending the month at 13.2%.

Edge, though, remained the second-most-used browser last month by gaining two-tenths of a point, reaching 7.8%. Meanwhile, IE gave up four-tenths of a percentage point, sliding to 5.5%. Edge’s number was a record high; IE’s was a record low for the 15 years Computerworld has records from Net Applications.

The Edge-up, IE-down trend has been well established. Though IE’s downhill run has been rapid — it’s lost three percentage points in the last 12 months — that may not reflect the old browser’s residual strength: Browser metrics vendors have a hard time collecting accurate data from enterprise networks, which may mask multiple internal IP addresses by showing a single address externally.

Edge’s April addition was the fifth consecutive month of gains, the most since the first 15 months after the browser’s mid-2015 kick-off when it grew because of Windows 10’s free-upgrade-fueled adoption. Computerworld remained reluctant to call the “Chromiumization” of Edge a success — more data’s required — but the seven-tenths of a point in the last three months, the period since Microsoft released a stable build of the browser, certainly puts it on the path toward the major milestone of 10%.

Ultimately, the only way for Edge to grow beyond that will be at Chrome’s expense. That’s a lot to ask of a browser which is, after all, Chrome at its roots.

Elsewhere in Net Application’s numbers, Safari retrieved the three-tenths of a point it lost the month before, getting back to 3.9%, and Opera Software’s Opera lost less than a tenth of a point to stay, with rounding, at 1.1%.

Net Applications calculates share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers used to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm counts visitor sessions to measure browser activity.

Top web browsers, March 2020

Firefox in March continued a march toward ruin, falling twice its average loss over the past year and losing its place as the world’s second-most-used browser.

According to data posted today by analytics company Net Applications, Firefox’s share in March slumped to 7.2%, down four-tenths of a percentage point. It was the fifth month in the last six in which the browser shed users — and much more importantly — a record low since Firefox climbed out of obscurity to threaten Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) 15 years ago.

This record was the second in a row for Firefox, after February’s debut below the 2016 slump that previously marked the browser’s trough. Two do not a dataset make, but if a legitimate trend develops with, say, another month or two of declines, Mozilla will be, to say the least, in deep trouble.

Notably, Firefox’s fall meant it ceded second place to Microsoft’s Edge. Although Mozilla’s browser had handed second place to Chrome in March 2014 as the latter climbed ahead in the race against the still-dominant IE, Firefox resumed the silver spot in December 2018 when Microsoft’s browser lost it for good.

Computerworld again has had to adjust its forecast based on the latest losses. A month ago, that prediction — based on Firefox’s 12-month average — signaled the browser would fall under 7% in June; now, that mark should be reached in the first few days of May. By year’s end, Firefox’s share could be as low as 5.6%.

Now No. 2, Edge

Microsoft’s browsers — IE and Edge — lost three-tenths of a percentage point in March to end at 13.5%.

But as has been the case recently, the Redmond, Wash. company’s two browsers forged different paths, with Edge rising and IE falling. IE shed half a percentage point last month, plunging to 5.9%, while Edge added two-tenths of a point, climbing to 7.6%, another record high for the five-year-old browser.

Edge’s increase was the fourth consecutive, matching the longest stretch yet of that browser’s gains. In the last two months, Edge has added nearly six-tenths of a percentage point to its total, which represented a growth rate of 8%.

That two-month span was not randomly selected; February and March were the first two complete months after Microsoft released a stable, polished version of the revamped Edge — built atop Chromium code, the same that powers Chrome — on Jan. 15.

Yet the cause of that increase remains unknown. It may be that Microsoft’s decision to clone Chrome is behind the increase, but it is far from certain. More data is needed.

There was a positive-for-Microsoft signal, however. March’s percentage of Windows 10 PCs running Edge — assuming that Edge on Windows 7 and macOS has added little to the total — was 13.2%, tying the record previously set by the browser several times since its introduction. The growth on Windows 10 may be from the beginnings of Microsoft’s automatic swap of old-Edge for new-Edge, even though the firm promised it would not make the latter the default on systems where it wasn’t already set so.

IE’s downturn, meanwhile, was also a positive for anyone rooting for Windows. The browser — in this case IE11, last of its kind — is on what appears to be its deathbed, now under 6% and by all rights should slide under 5% by the end of July. Getting rid of IE — along with its ancient technologies and security vulnerabilities — will be a win for everyone, even if that means shifting legacy labors from that browser to the IE mode inside Edge.

Chrome jumps, again

Chrome leaped 1.2 percentage points last month — the most since September — to reach 68.5%, the highest mark since July, when the browser peaked at a tenth of a point higher.

The increase improved Chrome’s 12-month forecast, putting the browser on a slow river of growth: The prediction now pegs Chrome at around 69% by the end of this year. Computerworld wouldn’t be surprised if that didn’t pan out, however, as the two times Chrome crested 68%, both because of 1.2-point or larger increases, it immediately slumped, albeit not by as much, the month following.

Elsewhere, Apple’s Safari slipped three-tenths of a point to 3.6%, and Opera Software’s Opera remained flat at 1.1%. Safari’s impressive growth of last year, estimates that were flawed because Net Applications counted iPads running iPadOS 13 as macOS devices, was erased from the record when the metrics vendor revised several months of data. By March, Safari had settled into a dead tie with its year-ago number. All the fuss, then, had been for naught.

Net Applications calculates share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers used to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm counts visitor sessions to measure browser activity.

Have work-at-home, stay-at-home orders impacted the browser shares?

To answer that question: Who knows at the moment? But the general drift of the browser shares does hint at an affirmative.

The downturn in Firefox’s fate, for example, makes sense, as it’s the least likely of the top three — Chrome, Edge and Firefox — to be favored by IT. Sent home to work with company devices or told after that to download the preferred browser to their personal PCs to, say, access corporate assets, Firefox may have been replaced in many instances, if only temporarily, by Chrome or Edge.

Meanwhile, Chrome, and to a lesser extent Edge, might have received usage boosts based on the same conceit, that commercially-approved browsers — and both those would certainly apply — would benefit from a mass work-at-home order as has happened in large swaths of the U.S. and elsewhere.

An April of continued gains by Chrome and Edge — and a concurrent loss by Firefox — might confirm the theory, since few companies, at least in the U.S. asked employees to work at home all that month. (Microsoft and Google, for example, ordered theirs home in the first week of March.)

If the COVID-19 pandemic did spark a browser usage shift, will that become permanent? Too soon to know.

Top web browsers, February 2020

Firefox took a significant turn for the worse last month, falling three times its average share loss over the past year and dropping to a level not seen since 2005.

According to data published Sunday by web metrics vendor Net Applications, Firefox’s share in February sank to 7.6%, down six-tenths of a percentage point. It was the eighth month in the last 12 in which Firefox spilled users and the third largest downturn during that stretch.

The last time Firefox recorded a share that low was in September 2005, when it also posted a 7.6% marker. At the time, Firefox was still chipping away at Internet Explorer (IE), Microsoft’s then-keystone of browsers, as it slowly grew to become a legitimate threat to Redmond. IE accounted for an astounding 86.8% of global share in September 2005.

Firefox’s decline erased nearly 7% of the browser’s position at the start of the month. To put that into context, Firefox’s slide was equivalent to Google Chrome’s losing 4.5 percentage points since Feb. 1.

The plummet upended Computerworld‘s forecast, which relied on Firefox’s 12-month average. A month ago, that prediction pointed to a June share of 7.7%. Not only did Firefox lose all that, and more, in just a month but according to the revised forecast, June now looks to be when the browser slips under 7%. By year’s end, Firefox could be as low as 6% unless something clots the bleeding.

The stress of these share losses was recently revealed, as Mozilla posted a revenue-expense imbalance in 2018 and a little later laid off 70 people.

It’s possible things will become even bleaker at Mozilla.

Getting Edgy?

Microsoft’s two browsers — IE and the revamped-with-Chromium-Edge — added two-tenths of a percentage point in February, a slight rebound from the triple-that decline of the month before. IE+Edge ended last month at 13.8%.

The increase, such as it was, came solely from Edge: IE spilled two-tenths of a point, sliding to 6.4% while Edge put four-tenths more on its tally, climbing to 7.4%. That’s as it should be, the old out and the new in.

Edge’s increase put it at a record level, something that’s occurred monthly for the past three quarters. But it’s still impossible to say with certainty that Microsoft’s decision to abandon its own Edge technologies and replace them with those from Chromium has been behind the gradual increase. It is looking increasingly likely, however. February’s percentage of Windows 10 PCs running Edge — assuming that Edge on Windows 7 and macOS contributions has been negligible — was 12.9%, above the 12-month-prior median by a full point.

Meanwhile, IE’s share was at its lowest since September, when it took a temporary dip.

Forecasting Edge’s future will be difficult until it establishes a clearer trend, which may not happen until Windows 10’s growth slows. (Up to Jan. 15, when Chromium Edge officially launched, Microsoft’s newer browser was Windows 10-only; it almost certainly will remain Windows 10-dominant.) Microsoft has promised that it will not make the new Edge the default browser on systems where it wasn’t already so set. That means the company’s plan to replace the original Edge with the Chromium-based Edge shouldn’t artificially boost the browser’s numbers.

Staying Chromey

Chrome added three-tenths of a percentage point last month — the same as in January — to end at 67.3%, its highest mark since October.

The increase left Chrome short of its 2019 peak — 68.6% in July — and improved the 12-month forecast by putting Google’s browser back on a growth road, albeit a very slow road. (The forecast had Chrome staying within 67% through year’s end, even past the midway point of 2021.)

In plainer terms, Chrome will continue to play the browser gorilla. Unless Microsoft pulls some unknown-as-yet rabbit from its Edge hat, Chrome will remain untouched by rivals for the near-to-mid-range future.

Elsewhere, Apple’s Safari slumped four-tenths of a percentage point to 3.9%, while Opera Software’s namesake dropped two-tenths of a point, falling to 1.2%. Safari’s once impressive growth by Net Applications’ account — spurred by mistakenly tallying iPads running iPadOS 13 as macOS devices — was reined in last month when the analytics company revised several months of past data. In February, Safari did stay above the same month’s 2019 level, though (but by just two-tenths of a point).

Net Applications calculates share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers used to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm counts visitor sessions to measure browser activity.

Top web browsers, January 2020

After three months of gains, in January Microsoft’s browsers flipped to the “Decline” setting and shed user share. And for the first time, Microsoft’s newer browser, Edge, posted a larger share than the aged veteran Internet Explorer (IE).

According to data published Saturday by analytics company Net Applications, Microsoft’s January browser share — a combination of Edge and IE — fell by six-tenths of a percentage point to 13.6%. On its own IE dropped almost nine-tenths of a point — that browser’s largest one-month decline since September 2019 — but Edge’s increase of three-tenths of a percentage point nullified some of the older browser’s loss.

For January, IE recorded a user share of 6.6%, while Edge posted 7%. It was the first time since Edge’s mid-2015 debut in its original form that that browser bested IE. (Microsoft relaunched Edge on Jan. 15 as a browser built atop Chromium, the Google-led open-source project whose technologies also power Chrome.)

Although IE might again occasionally edge Edge in user share, the trend will almost certainly be IE’s continued decline. The browser will be supported on Windows 7 for three years and Windows 10 for likely as long, but it’s a dead end kept alive only to keep enterprise customers from revolting. Even Edge’s integrated “IE mode” will eventually be retired.

Meanwhile, Edge’s portion of Windows 10’s browser activity — a measurement Computerworld has touted as a better indicator of the browser’s mettle than user share on all personal computers — ended January at 12.3%, the same number as the month before, hinting that there was little new demand for the revamped Chromium-based Edge on Windows 10, or the other platforms (Windows 7, Windows 8.1, macOS) that it runs on, for that matter.

Edge’s user share performance will be worth watching in 2020, as Microsoft has staked everything on the all-Chromium clone of Chrome, what with IE relegated to a legacy role and the original Edge a complete flop. Going for the new Edge: Microsoft’s reputation in supporting its software in the enterprise, primarily through its management chops. Against it: Chrome’s dominance in corporations, unequal management be damned, and strangely enough, Microsoft’s odd decision to force Chrome in Office 365 environments to default to Bing as its search engine.

If Microsoft perseveres — resistance has mounted, with users and IT administrators denouncing the decision — and weds Chrome to Microsoft Search for Office 365 tenants, it’s annulling one of the most obvious reasons enterprises would adopt Edge.

That just seems odd.

Firefox slumps to share low not seen since 2016

In January, Firefox gave up two-tenths of a percentage point of user share, sliding to 8.1%, the lowest mark since August 2016.

Last month was the eighth straight that Firefox’s user share was lower than 9 percentage points, also a record. (Firefox had a four-month slump in the summer of 2016, but it bounced back, climbing to 13% before it again started the decline that continues.)

Nor is the forecast anything but depressing for Mozilla. That prediction — based, as always, on the 12-month average of changes — now has Firefox slipping under 8% as early as April and falling to 7% by September. Both dates are sooner than the forecast of a month ago because of the January dip.

That’s the last thing Mozilla needs at the moment. It’s 2018 finances showed slightly greater expenditures than income. More recently, the organization admitted it had failed to make its revenue goals, which had included significant subscription moneys, and laid off 70 employees.

Firefox-related subscriptions can’t save Mozilla if Firefox has fewer and fewer users.

Can anything unseat Chrome?

Chrome turned it around — somewhat — in January, adding three-tenths of a point to its user share to end the month at 66.9%. (Ironically, that was the same number Chrome hit in February 2019.)

The small gain put an end to a three-month stretch of losses, a first for Chrome. It also softened the impact of Chrome’s 12-month downturn so that Computerworld‘s forecast now predicts the browser stays about 66% well through this year and all of next. Without considerably more turbulence in Chrome’s share movement, there’s no chance Google loses its top-of-the-heap spot.

Considering the weakness of Firefox, the only viable threat to Chrome has to be Edge, Microsoft’s attempt to supplant the leader with, well, the leader’s step-sister.

Safari’s explosive growth? Yeah, that didn’t happen

And here we thought that Apple’s Safari was making a huge comeback on the Mac. Not so, said Net Applications.

“Due to changes made to the user agent in iPadOS 13, iPads were identified as macOS devices,” the California metrics vendor wrote on its website. “This change propagated progressively from September to December and required an adjustment to the data in that timeframe.”

In other words, by mistakenly tallying iPads running iPadOS 13, which launched in September, as macOS-powered devices, Net Applications overestimated not only the share of macOS but also of anything running on it, like Safari.

In Safari’s case, the differences between the contemporaneous shares and those recently adjusted to remove the iPadOS data were dramatic. In December, for instance, Net Applications had pegged Safari’s user share as 6%.That month’s adjusted share: just 3.8%.

The other months from September on showed similar variance between original and adjusted shares. November’s 5.3% (reported at the time) fell to 3.6% (adjusted by eliminating iPadOS); October’s 4.8% became 3.4%; and September’s 4.4% sunk to 3.4%.

In January, Safari added another five-tenths of a percentage point to climb to 4.2%, meaning that during 2019 Safari grew by less than one-tenth of a point, not the gargantuan-in-comparison 2.3 percentage points Computerworld reported a month ago.

Frankly, the very large gains by Safari should have raised eyebrows and questions. Instead, Computerworld posited that Safari’s growth “demonstrated that Chrome can be vulnerable, at least in some spaces.”

How naive.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people run to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions to measure browser activity.

Top web browsers, December 2019

Microsoft’s browsers last month surged to close the year with the highest user share since August 2018, giving its maker a morale boost just weeks before it is to deliver a totally revamped Edge.

According to data published Wednesday by metrics vendor Net Applications, Microsoft’s December browser share — a combination of Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge — climbed 1.4 percentage points to 14.2%, the highest mark in all of 2019. The year’s total user share increase of 1.8 points marked the first time since 2014 that Microsoft’s browsers put in a positive January-to-December.

Over half of December’s gain came from Edge, which added eight-tenths of a percentage point, reaching 6.8%, a record for a browser Microsoft will relaunch in two weeks. IE also climbed last month, adding six-tenths of a percentage point and rising to 7.4%, the most for that browser since August.

(On Jan. 15, Microsoft will begin replacing the homegrown version of Edge on Windows 10 with the new browser built on Google’s technologies.)

Edge’s increase bettered, proportionally, the accompanying December increase of Windows 10, and so the percentage of the latter’s users relying on the browser ticked up to 12.3%, the best number since last summer. December may be the last month that Edge’s portion of Windows 10’s browser activity can be reliably pegged, what with the impending launch of the final “full-Chromium” version for Windows 7, which at the end of 2019 accounted for nearly 31% of all Windows. Although Windows 7 will receive its final security updates on Jan. 14 – except for businesses that pay Microsoft for the post-retirement Extended Security Updates, or ESU — there will be a sizable number of PCs globally running the OS after that date (an estimated 446 million, give or take). It’s almost certain that some will dump IE for the new Edge.

But how much ground the new, Chromium-based Edge gains, if any, once it is in polished form remains unclear. Much will depend on how strong users’ ties are to Chrome, whether IT admins will return their charges to Microsoft’s browser and Google’s reactions. How Edge plays out during 2020 will be among the year’s more interesting enterprise stories.

IE fared well, too, as difficult to believe as that is. By Net Applications’ numbers, IE accounted for 8.6% of all Windows browsing last month, its best mark since May. Although Microsoft has maintained IE on life-support, catering to those organizations that still need it to run specific web apps or intranet sites not worth refreshing, the browser’s share will likely fall as the new Edge’s rises: The remade Edge includes an IE mode, which should make the stand-alone Internet Explorer moot for most commercial customers. Another year like that and IE will be an afterthought run by fewer than 5% of Windows users.

It may be months, however, before an accelerated IE decline, if one occurs, becomes clear enough to fuel future forecasts of its final days.

Year-end recap: Microsoft’s browsers gained 1.8 percentage points in 2019, representing a 14% increase in share.

The S.S. Firefox stays afloat

In December, Firefox recovered almost half the user share it lost the month prior; the browser ended the year at 8.4%, up two-tenths of a point from November.

Although that kept Mozilla’s ship from slipping under the waves — something Computerworld feared was in the cards a month ago — Firefox’s future remained more gloomy than glad. It spent the whole second half of 2019 under 9% — the six-month average was 8.5% — and all but one month of the year in single digits, a first (at least since when it was regularly gaining share as it nibbled at IE).

Computerworld‘s revised forecast — based, as usual, on the 12-month average of changes — now has Firefox slipping under 8% by April and falling to 7% about a year from now. And that’s in the face of a small bump in December. The harder Mozilla works, it seems, at improving Firefox — it’s easily the leader in the across-the-browser-market-bar-Chrome anti-tracking movement — the lower droops its user share. How depressing for its fans, users or not.

Year-end recap: Firefox lost 1.2 percentage points during 2019, representing a 13% decline in share.

Chrome sets consecutive loss record

During December, Chrome dropped half a percentage point, slipping to 66.6% and ending the year down that same amount from 2019’s beginning. This was the first time since 2014 that Chrome lost share over the course of a year.

Last month also marked the first time Chrome had posted three consecutive months of losses (they totaled 1.8 percentage points), an even stronger signal than in November that Google’s browser may have topped out.

There’s certainly no danger that Chrome will suddenly find itself usurped by, say, Firefox or Edge, not when it accounted for two-thirds of global browser activity on personal computers last month. But it was impossible for Chrome’s growth, which started seriously only in 2014, seven years after the browser’s debut, to continue forever. Although it may be too early to say Chrome has peaked — the high-water mark thus far was 68.6% in July — declines over multiple months seem a worthwhile indicator.

This year’s browser story should be the impact, if any, on Chrome from Microsoft’s decision to recast Edge as a clone of the Google application. If swaths of enterprise IT decide to ditch Chrome and replace it with the Edge knock-off — for manageability reasons, Chrome could be threatened in the very long term. That has to be at the center of Microsoft’s strategy.

A new Computerworld forecast now puts Chrome on a very gradual — half a percentage point a month — decline, with the browser dipping under 66% sometime in the spring of 2021.

Year-end recap: Chrome lost half a percentage point in 2019, representing a 1% decline in share.

Safari reclaims defectors

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ data, Apple’s Safari posted the fifth straight month of gains, adding seven-tenths of a percentage point to reach 6% in December. Opera Software’s browser lost three-tenths of a point and slid to 1%.

Safari’s increase came as macOS itself dipped to accounting for 11.1% of all desktop operating systems, a decline of half a point from November. In turn, that sent Safari’s share of macOS for December soaring to 54.3%, its highest portion of that market since November 2017. (December was also the third straight month during which that metric increased.) Safari, which has also emphasized its privacy chops, particularly its anti-tracking capabilities, has demonstrated that Chrome can be vulnerable, at least in some spaces; as recently as May 2019, Safari accounted for just 35% of macOS-based browsing.

Year-end recap: Safari gained 2.3 percentage points during 2019, representing a 62% increase in share.

Year-end recap: Opera lost seven-tenths of a percentage points during 2019, representing a 43% decline in share.

IDG/Gregg Keizer

Top web browsers, November 2019

If Firefox were a ship, it would be becalmed on a flat sea, loosened seams leaking faster than the hand-worked pumps can empty the bilge, passengers springing overboard and swimming toward other vessels — those with sails bearing rivals’ logos.

According to data published Sunday by analytics company Net Applications, Firefox’s share for November slumped to 8.2%, down half a percentage point. It was the seventh month in the last 12 in which Firefox spilled share, the fifth where the loss amounted to a half point or more.

From 2005, when Firefox was scratching its way out of the single digits in an insurrection against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE), the browser has posted lower shares only three times, all in a short stretch of 2016 when Firefox bottomed out at 7.7%. That time, the browser clawed back to 13% (in October 2017) before again shrinking.

Unless something suddenly stems Firefox’s current free-fall, the browser will return to that low point of 7.7% by June, according to Computerworld‘s forecast, which relies on Firefox’s 12-month average. That same forecast predicts the open-source browser will dip under 8% as early as January.

Mozilla’s efforts to make Firefox more attractive as a browser choice have failed to move the share needle. From its November 2017 “Quantum” relaunch to its recent emphasis on the hottest browser topic — privacy in general, blocking ad and site trackers more specifically — the improvements and enhancements have been accompanied by collective shrug. Or worse, a step toward the exit.

Historically, Firefox has been the counterweight to the then-current leader, first IE, then Google’s Chrome. Firefox’s flirtation with irrelevancy as exhibited by its smaller user share may see that counterweight go weightless. Microsoft’s decision to adopt Google’s browser technology for its reborn Edge strengthened the monoculture. Sans Firefox, the browser choice becomes Chrome or near-Chrome.

Chrome: Settling into its spot?

During November, Chrome lost a quarter of a percentage point, dipping to 67.2%, the browser’s lowest mark since June.

While the loss was little more than a rounding error and could not be considered a threat to Chrome’s dominance by any stretch, Google’s browser may be close to its upper-end limit.

Last month’s share was identical to Chrome’s number at the start of the year, for one, so for all the wild swings — up 2.3 points one month, down 1.7 points the next — it ended where it began. And although Chrome shed three-quarters of a percentage point in the past six months, in the last three the movements were a wash, hinting that changes to share have slowed.

The forecast based on the 12-month average foretold some gains — Chrome should make the 68% mark by June — but the prophesied increase was significantly less than a month ago, when the prediction contended Chrome would hit 70% by mid-2020.

IE edges Edge

Microsoft’s browsers recovered three-tenths of a percentage point in November, the second straight month of share gains (and only the fourth time that’s happened in the last five years). IE+Edge ended November at 12.8%.

That total was tallied of two browsers, IE and Edge, with the increase credited entirely to the ancient and obsolete IE, not the at-least-newer Edge: IE climbed four-tenths of a point to 6.8% while Edge fell a tenth to 6%.

Because Windows 10’s share of all operating systems also declined, Edge remained with an 11.2% share of all Windows 10 browser activity, the level it’s been stuck at for a full quarter.

Measuring Edge against Windows 10 will soon be impossible, as the revamped browser — Microsoft tossed its own technologies and built a new Edge from Google’s Chromium — will reach release status Jan. 15, launching for Windows 7 and 8.1 as well as 10, not to mention macOS.

Whether Edge’s remodel will result in a jolt to its user share is unknown. Microsoft is, if not counting on Edge’s phoenix-rising, eager to put a thumb on the scale to boost the chances; it will automatically replace the original homegrown Edge with the Chromium-based version rather than wait as users do what they do best, stick with the status quo.

Edge may never gain much ground in Net Applications’ measurements. The California metrics vendor best quantifies individuals’ browsing activity, and while Microsoft wouldn’t object if that group dumped Chrome for a Chrome clone, there’s good evidence that the retuned Edge is a corporate play.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ numbers, Apple’s Safari gained half a percentage point for the fourth consecutive month, climbing to 5.3%, and Opera Software’s browser remained flat at 1.3%. Safari’s increase came as macOS climbed six-tenths of a percentage point to 11.6%, a record for Apple’s operating system. For November, Safari’s share of macOS rose to 45.6%, the highest mark since December 2017, showing that it is possible for a browser to convince customers to ditch Chrome for a browser they’d used before.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers that render the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions to measure browser user activity.

Top web browsers, October 2019

Chrome last month continued its seesaw in user share, throwing away most of the gains it had made the month prior while remaining fully in charge of the browser market.

According to data published today by California analytics vendor Net Applications, Chrome’s share for October dropped by 1.1 percentage points to 67.4%. It was the fourth straight time that Chrome shed some of its share the month following an increase of one point or more. In September, Chrome had recorded a boost of 1.3 points.

The up-down has not always resulted in a net gain for each months’ pairings, and when increases have outweighed losses of the month previous, the upside has been small. That’s why over the course of the past 12 months, Chrome has climbed by just one percentage point.

Yet the difference between Chrome, the browser leader, and the next in line — Microsoft’s Double-mint twins of Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge — was 54.9 points, nearer the high end of the 12-month range between 51.7 and 56.5. That metric shows that Chrome’s position is solid. Very solid, in fact.

Computerworld now forecasts that Chrome will return to 68% shortly (within three months at the most) and crack 70% by June. Even if its seesaw keeps at it.

Firefox slips

One of the unanswered questions in Browser Land is whether Mozilla’s Firefox can survive. Can the browser, which kicked off renewed competition in the space — when it launched in 2004, Microsoft’s IE had eradicated all rivals — keep its head above the proverbial water, say, above the very-minor-browser marker of 5%?

Good question.

Firefox lost one-tenth of a percentage point during October, ending the month at 8.6%. Although that wasn’t Firefox’s nadir of the past 12 months, it was the third-lowest number during that period and the sixth-lowest overall (or at least since the browser crawled out of the single digits in early 2006).

It’s almost painful to watch Firefox struggle to sustain its share, much less grow it. In October, the browser’s user share was below the median for the past 12 months (9.1%) and significantly under the median for the 12-month span before that (November 2017-October 2018, 10.2%).

Although Mozilla continues to stress Firefox’s privacy chops — the latest upgrade added tools that block social media networks’ trackers — that has not resonated enough with potential users to bring large numbers to the browser.

By Net Applications’ data, Firefox’s near future looks weak, but not necessarily bleak. Using the browser’s average movement over the last 12 months, Firefox should remain above 8% for the next year, dipping below that only in November 2020. But if the past six months are a better clue, Firefox is in trouble: That forecast would put the browser under 8% as soon as January, under 7% by June and below 5% as soon as December 2020.

(The difference in the two predictions? The six-month average contains three months of large, more-than-half-a-point losses, which dominated the total. Those three months were diluted in the 12-month average.)

How long will Microsoft maintain IE?

Microsoft’s recovery from September’s all-time browser low wasn’t much of a come-back, but it was better than nothing. In October, the Redmond, Wash. company’s browsers snatched back some of the share they lost the month before, adding four-tenths of a percentage point to up its share balance to almost 12.5%.

The firm’s total was, as always, composed of two different browsers, IE and Edge. And the increase was neatly split between the pair, each adding about two-tenths of a percentage point to the kitty. IE climbed to 6.4%, while Edge edged up to 6.1%.

Windows 10’s share of all operating systems climbed at almost the same rate, so Edge simply kept its share of Windows 10’s browsers at the same 11.2% of September. That mark, remember, was the lowest of the year so far, but not a record low. (The latter would be the 10.9% in September 2018.)

Meanwhile, IE’s increase translated into a slight boost in its share of all Windows browsers, ending October up two-tenths of a point to 7.3%. That IE’s portion of all Windows browsers has fallen by about a fourth — a year-ago, the number was 10.6% — is proof of its fast fade among customers.

Within months, Microsoft will finalize its “full-Chromium” Edge, which will feature an integrated IE mode that replicates that browser for the corporate users who still need it — notably IE’s ActiveX controls — to run aged web apps and obsolescing intranet sites. At some point after the new IE’s debut, Microsoft will forcibly replace the old Edge on Windows 10 PCs (and likely push it onto the Windows 7 systems being serviced by the for-a-free Extended Support Release (ESR) after that OS’s public retirement) with the new.

Computerworld has speculated that Microsoft will eventually purge IE from Windows machines and tell the few customers then still needing the browser to instead rely only on the mode inside Edge. That forecast has been driven by IE’s quickly-declining share. A year from now, going by its performance over the past 12 months, IE will be run by less than 3.5% of all Windows users, just not enough to warrant a separate application.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ data, Apple’s Safari gained half a percentage point for the second consecutive month, climbing to 4.8%, and Opera Software’s browser stayed dropped a tad to 1.3%. Safari’s increase came in the face of a dip in macOS, which lost about six-tenths of a percentage point in October. That drop in macOS — expected as it was because September’s nearly-two percentage point leap was clearly not realistic — contributed to pushing Safari’s share of Apple’s operating system to 43.9%, the highest it’s been since March 2018.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions to measure browser user activity.

Top web browsers, September 2019

Microsoft’s browsers stumbled last month, dropping share like a lame Netflix series and falling to a record low after wiping out all of 2019’s gains, plus more.

According to data published today by analytics company Net Applications, Microsoft’s browser share for September — composed of Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge — fell 1.8 percentage points to 12%, an all-time low. To put the decline in perspective, the browsers accounted for a user share of 12.4% at the first of this year and hit a high of 14% in April.

More than two-thirds of that decline was attributed to IE, which plummeted by nearly 1.4 points, falling to 6.1%, a record low for the browser that once lorded if over the web. Edge also slid in September, losing four-tenths of a percentage point and dropping to 5.9%. Edge’s slip erased almost all of its gains in August, when the Windows 10-only browser reached a record high.

Because of the concurrent rise in Windows 10’s share of all operating systems, Edge’s raw decline translated into a more substantial drop in its share of Windows 10’s browsers. That number fell to 11.2% in September, the lowest level all year.

Although the “full-Chromium” Edge, the version Microsoft’s building using technologies from the Google-dominated Chromium project, is under construction, the browser’s future is cloudy at best. Clarity won’t come until Microsoft finishes the Chromium-based Edge and forces that onto Windows 10 users, something the company has said it will do at some point after launch.

IE fared even worse in a comparison with all the other browsers that run on Windows. By Net Applications’ numbers, IE accounted for only 7% of all Windows browsing last month, also a record low. Microsoft kept IE on support only because some organizations require it for aged apps or intranet sites, but that rationale has faded fast: In the last 12 months, IE’s share of all Windows declined by 60%. Another year like that and IE will be an afterthought run by fewer than 5% of Windows users.

Firefox scratches, survives another month

Firefox added three-tenths of a percentage point to its user share in September, wrapping up the month at 8.7% and marking the second straight month of keeping things in the black. Even so, it was fourth consecutive month that Firefox remained under 9%, tying a record set in May, June, July and August 2016.

Although it was another month that Firefox scratched out some gains, the browser still stands on shaky ground. Because the last 12 months shows a decline of nearly a percentage point, Computerworld‘s revised forecast — based on the 12-month average — has Firefox slipping under 8% about mid-2020.

For all of Mozilla’s work on Firefox — from the redesign two years ago to its aggressive adoption of anti-tracking and pro-privacy measures — nothing has kicked the browser into sustained growth. A year ago, Firefox’s share was 9.6%; when Mozilla introduced Firefox Quantum in November 2017, the share was 11.4%. Only three of the past 18 months recorded shares of 10% or more.

Chrome commandeers more share

Google’s Chrome put another 1.3 percentage points on its frame, weighing in for the month at 68.5%, just a tenth of a point off the record high set in July.

Last month, Computerworld noted the odd pattern to Chrome’s share, stretches when the browser would add share one month, lose much of it the next. That continued in September — this has been regular as the proverbial clockwork since February — when Chrome went on its growth spurt after shedding 1.4 points in August.

If the tick-tock continues this month, October should be a downer for Chrome.

But as Computerworld has said before, what counts is the long-term movement of a browser. There, Chrome has done well, adding 2.1 percentage points to its share over the last year. Another sign: The 68.5% of September was the second-highest mark for the browser, edged out only by July’s 68.6%.

Chrome’s gains, stymied as they have been at times by losing months, put a new spin on Computerworld‘s prediction of its future. Using the 12-month average, the forecast pegs Chrome at more than 69% in November and over 70% by May.

Computerworld has Net Application records going back to January 2005, so it’s possible to compare Chrome’s prowess today with IE’s of yesteryear.

Google comes off second best there — for now, at least — because IE’s share was an astounding 89.4% that month. The remainder was split among rivals, including Firefox (at 5.6%), Apple’s Safari (1.7%) and Netscape’s Navigator (2%). It wasn’t until December 2008 that IE’s share fell to about where Chrome’s is now.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ data, Apple’s Safari grew by half a percentage point to 4.4% and Opera Software’s browser stayed where it was at 1.4%. Safari’s increase was the second straigh,t but was a due entirely to a nearly-two percentage point leap by macOS that put the operating system in unknown territory (and likely on shaky ground; macOS’ 11.6% simply won’t stand up).

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions to measure browser user activity.

Top web browsers, August 2019

Microsoft’s Edge completed a six-month surge in user share that represented a 24% increase and brought the browser to its highest-ever level.

According to U.S. analytics vendor Net Applications, Edge’s August user share rose by half a percentage point to 6.3%, a record for the browser in its first four years. During the six months ending Aug. 31, Edge added 1.6 points to its share, the equivalent of a 24% boost.

The growth by Edge, however, did not translate into a similar-sized increase in the browser’s portion of Windows 10 browsers because the operating system jumped up more than two percentage points. (Although the “full-Chromium” Edge, the version Microsoft’s building using the Google-dominated Chromium project’s technologies, has been released in preview for non-Windows 10 OSes, it’s a certainty that the vast bulk of Edge’s users are on 10.)

By Net Applications’ numbers, Edge accounted for only 12.4% of all Windows 10 browser activity, a half a point increase over the month prior. But the six-month increase of Edge’s share of Windows 10 was a measly 4%.

It may be tempting to credit Microsoft’s switch to Chromium for the increase but Microsoft did not give users a working preview until mid-April. Of the four months since, two recorded decreases in Edge’s browser share.

Until Microsoft rolls out a polished version of full-Chromium Edge — a Stable channel build, using Chrome’s nomenclature, which Microsoft has adopted — and better yet forces the new Edge onto Windows 10 users — Computerworld is convinced it will be impossible to pin the browser’s ups and downs on the revamp.

On the share stairs, Chrome takes one step down after two up

After a near-record leap in July, Chrome last month dropped 1.4 percentage points, falling to 67.2%, the same number it booked at the start of 2019.

Chrome has had a habit of doing this two up, one back — or even two up, two back — recently. In May, Chrome added 2.3 points, then promptly lost 1.6 points in June. July saw an increase of another 2.3 percentage points, with August subtracting 1.4 of those.

The ups and downs have produced projections that have been alternately up- then downbeat. This one is the latter: Chrome now won’t reach the 70% milestone until December 2020, a full year later than the forecast of just last month. (Reality will likely be somewhere in between.) But there’s still no signal that Chrome’s rise has plateaued, much less that it’s in danger or reversing.

Edge’s 1.5 percentage point increase over the last six months notwithstanding, there simply isn’t a competitor worth the name among the browsers-not-named-Chrome.

Firefox hangs on

Firefox added a tenth of a percentage point to its user share in August, wrapping up the month at 8.4% and putting an end to a three-month slide.

But August was also the third consecutive month that Firefox remained under the 9% bar. Its record: Four straight months below 9% in May through August 2016.

While Firefox at least didn’t lose share, it continued to flirt with disaster. Computerworld‘s revised forecast put the browser under 8% by November and predicted that the browser will drop below 7% by August 2020.

It becomes harder and harder to visualize how Mozilla will work its way out of the browser basement. Can its focus on privacy, specifically the emphasis on blocking web trackers, convince millions to try (or retry) Firefox? That seems tough when every rival but Chrome rushes to implement their own anti-tracking. Is the enterprise Firefox’s salvation? How can it be when Microsoft positions Edge as more-or-less-Chrome but with its enterprise imprimatur? Firefox needs a solid six months of growth at a minimum to convince anyone that it has put possible extinction behind it.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ numbers, Apple’s Safari grew by half a percentage point to 3.9% and Opera Software’s browser slid a tad to 1.4%. The only silver lining for either was Safari’s share of all macOS-powered computers — 39.8% — was the highest since May 2018.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions to measure browser user activity.

Top browsers, July 2019

Chrome again jumped in user share, adding the most in a single month since its 2016 heyday, when Google took advantage of a disastrous Microsoft decision to claim the top spot.

According to web analytics company Net Applications, Chrome’s July user share climbed by 2.3 percentage points to end the month at 68.6%, a record for Google’s browser. The month’s increase was the largest since August 2016, at the tail end of an eight-month tsunami that swept Microsoft from its decades-old perch.

In five of the past seven months, Chrome has held more than two-thirds of global browser share, a statement to its grip on the market. The only extant browser that has accounted for such a large portion of the world’s web activity? Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE), which a decade ago was as dominant as Chrome is today.

But Microsoft deliberately pulled the plug in the IE bathtub and within months watched its lead swirl down a drain. In mid-2014, the Redmond, Wash. company told Windows users that they would have to upgrade to the newest-available IE for the OS running their PCs. The order scratched a year of support from IE7, four years from IE8 and IE9, and seven years from IE10. (At the time, IE8 was the most popular version of the browser.) Only IE11 survived with support intact.

But if Microsoft expected an uptake of IE11, it was sorely disappointed. After the mandate went into effect in January 2016 — when more than half of all those running a Microsoft browser were forced to switch — a stunning decline began. In the first eight months of 2016, Microsoft’s global browser share plummeted 16 percentage points, representing a loss of about a third of its total. During the same stretch, Chrome gained 21.6 percentage points, sprinting from 32% to 54%. Computerworld has long maintained that when faced with an upgrade of one sort or another — IE8 to IE11 or IE to Chrome — millions upon millions picked the latter.

In any case, IE never recovered, and Chrome has never looked back. Instead, Google’s browser has angled to eat the world. According to its 12-month average user share change, Chrome will account for more than 70% of all browser share by the end of the year. By the end of 2020, that number will approach 75%.

Firefox feels like it’s slipping away

Firefox shed user share again in July, making for the third consecutive month of losses. Mozilla’s browser dropped half a percentage point, falling to 8.3%, a mark not far above its record low of 7.7%, which it recorded three years ago.

Although Firefox has had several three-month periods where it lost user share, the 1.9-point total decline of the latest was the largest since a 2.3-point drop between November 2017 and January 2018.

As Computerworld has pointed out before, Firefox has had a tough time the last two years. Every once in a while, the browser posts a positive number, but those gains are always erased. Over the last 15 months, for example, Firefox reached 10% or more just twice, most recently in April. But then May, June and July came and washed Firefox near the 8% bar.

Firefox’s prognosis remains dire. In the last six months, the browser gave up 1.9 percentage points of user share, a depressing amount for an application that has no fat to begin with. Computerworld‘s latest forecast puts Firefox under 8% by October and contends that the browser will flirt with a sub-7% share by July 4, 2020.

Mozilla has banked on privacy as Firefox’s edge over rivals. But it’s also recently trumpeted enterprise manageability, likely hoping for some adoption in organizations apprehensive about Chrome’s connection to Google, and the latter’s reputation as a data collector and monitor of online behavior. Something had better work for Firefox, or it could easily become a boutique browser forever stuck in the low single digits.

Good luck with that Edge thing

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s browsers — IE and Edge — were also down for July.

The combined user share of IE+Edge slipped by one-tenth of a percentage point to 13.2%. Over the past several months, Microsoft’s browsers have alternately climbed and fallen, often taking one step forward followed by two steps back. Over the past six months, for example, Microsoft has added seven-tenths of a point to its user share bank; but during the past 12 months, it was down 2.1 points.

The July downturn was on Edge’s shoulders: Microsoft’s newest browser lost two-tenths of a point, slumping to 5.8%. Only a curious increase in IE by about three-fourths that amount kept Redmond’s losses down. (At this point, how is IE collecting new users?) Amazingly, IE, with a user share of 7.4%, continued to tally more user activity than Edge.

Edge — the current Edge — accounted for just 11.9% of all Windows-based browsing activity, a significant slip from the month prior, caused by Edge going down and Windows 10 going, well, up in spades.

Neither of Microsoft’s browsers are going to set any growth records. In fact, by the IE+Edge 12-month average, they’ll continue to contract. At the end of 2019, the combined user share will have dropped to 12%; a year from now, they could account for just 11% of all share.

Microsoft has its work cut out for it in reclaiming Edge from the morgue.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ numbers, Apple’s Safari grew by a tiny tad to 3.4% and Opera Software’s eponymous browser slid a small bit to 1.4%. The only silver lining for either was Safari’s share of all macOS-powered personal computers — 37.9% — ending up setting a three-month record.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions to quantify browser user activity.

Top browsers, June 2019

Mozilla’s Firefox took a user share beating for the second straight month, slipping under 9% for the first time since November 2018.

According to web analytics vendor Net Applications, Firefox’s June user share fell seven-tenths of a percentage point to 8.9%. The month’s decline was the second-most since Net Applications reset shares — to purge bot traffic from its data — more than a year and a half ago. Firefox’s largest one-month decline since then? May’s slide of just over seven-tenths of a point.

As Computerworld pointed out a month ago, Firefox has had a very tough time generating share growth over the last two years. Every once in a while, the browser posts a positive number, but those gains are quickly erased. Over the last 14 months, for example, Firefox recorded a share of 10% or more just twice, most recently in April. But then May and June came along and washed Firefox back under the 9% bar.

Firefox’s long-term prognosis remains dire. In the past year, the browser shed 1.3 percentage points of user share, a depressing amount for an application that has no fat on its frame. Computerworld‘s newest forecast has Firefox slipping below 8% by March 2020, then flirting with a sub-7% share near the end of that year.

But Mozilla’s browser has been in a slightly deeper hole before, then climbed up if not out of that hole. Three years ago, Firefox sank under 8%. Yet in six months, it had added more than four percentage points to its share total. Firefox largely held those gains for the next year before again heading into a downturn. Maybe Mozilla can pull another rabbit from a hat, perhaps on the back of its anti-tracking initiative, which has garnered attention if not users.

More for Microsoft’s Edge

While Mozilla’s browser lost user share, Microsoft’s found some more.

The combined user share of Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge climbed by three-tenths of a percentage point to 13.3%. But the added share did little to change Microsoft’s overall trend, which has been negative for much longer than CEO Satya Nadella has held the company’s top spot: IE + Edge lost 3.1 points in the past 12 months.

The user share drop-off came from IE, the legacy browser Microsoft maintains with monthly security updates but won’t upgrade with new features. Over the last year, IE’s share dropped 4.9 points; meanwhile, Edge added 1.9 percentage points during the same period.

In June, just 8.3% of all Windows users ran IE, a record low for the iconic browser. At its current 12-month average, IE will zero out within two years. That’s unlikely — someone will be running the creaky application in July 2021 — but the projection still speaks a truth, that like the rivals Microsoft crushed, IE will eventually go extinct.

Edge’s user share of all personal computers grew by seven-tenths of a percentage point in June, ending the month at 6%. The latter was a record high for Windows 10’s default browser. Edge accounted for an estimated 13.2% of all Windows 10 browsing activity last month, up 1.5 points from May and that metric’s highest point since April 2018.

It was unclear why Edge’s user share jumped in June, but it was almost certainly not due to the still-under-construction “full-Chromium” Edge, the revamp that will be powered by the same open-source rendering and JavaScript engines as drive Google’s Chrome. Full-Chromium Edge has yet to reach beta status, much less a production-quality stable build, and has been available to Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 for less than two weeks.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ numbers, Chrome stalled for the second time in three months, losing 1.6 percentage points to drop to a still-overwhelming-user-share-lead of 66.3%. June’s decline was the third largest for Chrome, beaten only by August 2013’s 1.8 points and April 2019’s 2.2 points. The whacky up-down-up-down-up rhythm of Chrome’s short-term moves thus continues.

Even the April and June losses, however, didn’t eliminate the year-long gain by Chrome: Google’s browser added 3.5 percentage points in user share over the past 12 months. June did, though, confuse Chrome’s future. Where the prior prediction pegged the browser making the 70% mark by October, the latest losses postponed that milestone to July 2020, near the prognosis put forward after April.

Apple’s Safari stayed stable in June at 3.3%, its lowest mark since the end of 2008. Safari’s smaller share was yet again partly due to the continued shrinking of macOS, which slipped between one- and two-tenths of a point last month. Just like IE, Edge and Firefox, Safari has been damaged by Chrome’s growth; Safari’s share of all macOS stood at 36.3% in June. Even though that was slightly better than the month prior, it was a shadow of its past. Four years ago, Apple’s browser accounted for two thirds of all Mac browser activity.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions to quantify browser user activity.

Top browsers, May 2019

Chrome in May bounced back from a massive April decline to reach a record user share of nearly 68%, sending rivals’ shares tumbling.

As Computerworld pointed out a month ago when reporting on Chrome’s record loss during April, short-term browser movements often lead nowhere. Such was the case when Chrome did a 180-degree turn, adding 2.3 percentage points in May, more than it had lost the month before.

The bounce-back was the fourth straight time that, when Chrome lost user share, it regained enough to erase the loss a month later.

According to Internet analytics company Net Applications, Chrome’s May user share reached 67.9%, a new high for the Google browser. The increase was the largest since August 2016, when Chrome accounted for 54% of all user share and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge still owned over a third of global share. Over the last 12 months, Chrome has gained five percentage points.

May’s gain put Chrome back on track to break the 70% barrier before year’s end. Where last month’s forecast pegged the browser making that mark by June 2020, the latest calculation — based on the 12-month average — pegs Chrome at 70% by October.

Firefox retreats…, again

As Chrome climbed, other browsers descended the user share ladder. Mozilla’s Firefox lost seven-tenths of a percentage point in May, its largest single-month decline since November 2017, when Net Applications reset shares across the board because it eliminated bot-driven traffic from its data. Firefox last month fell to 9.5%, returning the browser to its December 2018 level.

Firefox has had a terrible time sustaining any user share growth. In the last year, the longest uptick has been just two months, so May’s quick retreat wasn’t unexpected. But it has to concern Mozilla that the browser, the mainstay of its efforts, can’t shake itself out of the single-digit doldrums, climb into 10%+ territory and stay there.

Computerworld‘s latest forecast for Firefox now concludes the browser will remain under 10% for the foreseeable future, sliding below 9% in August 2020. Somehow, Mozilla’s engineers and designers have to come up with features that will entice new users to join up (or old ones to return). The November 2017 release of “Quantum,” a Firefox redesign that rolled out to some fanfare, has failed to translate into greater share. In fact, it’s been the opposite: Firefox’s user share has fallen about 2 percentage points since, representing a 20% decline.

Only Microsoft’s browsers have dropped more than that in the same stretch.

IE’s share of all Windows slides below 9%

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ numbers, the combined user share of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge slid nine-tenths of a percentage point to 13%. The decline added to the ongoing slide for Microsoft’s browsers, which have lost 3 percentage points in the last 12 months. May’s fall erased more than two-thirds of April’s out-of-the-blue gains.

Most of the user share drop-off came from IE, the legacy browser Microsoft maintains with monthly security updates but won’t upgrade with new features. During May, an anemic 8.7% of all Windows users ran IE. No wonder some — including Computerworld — expect IE to vanish, or at best be absorbed into Edge when that browser adds an IE mode to its Chromium foundation.

Edge slipped as well, dipping in May by two-tenths of a percentage point, even as Windows 10’s user share grew by 1.6 points. Edge accounted for an estimated 11.7% of all Windows 10 browsing activity last month, down eight-tenths of a point from April. That was, however, the first decline since December.

Apple’s Safari fell three-tenths of a point — three times what it had lost in April — to end at 3.3%, its lowest since the end of 2008. Safari’s smaller share was again at least partly due to the continuing shrinking of macOS user share, which slipped about a tenth of a point. But like IE, Edge and Firefox, Safari has suffered from the come-to-Chrome movement; its share of all macOS drooped to 35.5% in May. Two years ago, Apple’s browser owned 54% of the Mac browser activity market.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions to quantify browser user activity.

Top browsers, April 2019

Chrome last month lost a record amount of user share, a measurement of browser activity, just one month after reaching a new all-time high.

Down. Up. Up. Down. Tracking the month-by-month movement of browsers’ user share can be trying when the data doesn’t show a crystal-clear short-term trend line. Does this mean that Chrome is poised to plummet? Doubtful. Could it? Certainly. Nothing stays on top forever.

Just ask Microsoft.

According to Internet analytics vendor Net Applications, Chrome’s user share plunged 2.2 percentage points in April to 65.6%, its lowest mark since October. The fall was over half a point more than the previous record, set in August 2013, when Chrome accounted for a mere 16% of all user share and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) was the beast of browsers with 57.6%.

Even that massive drop-off, however, didn’t erase the past year’s gains by Google’s browser. For the last 12 months, Chrome remained up four percentage points, the most of any browser by far. History is also in Chrome’s favor: The last three times Chrome lost user share, the following month it added a percentage point or more of share to its total, enough to erase the earlier decline.

The plunge did put a crimp in Chrome’s bid to break the 70% barrier. Where last month’s forecast pegged the browser making that mark by August of this year, the latest calculation — based on the 12-month average — puts 70% down on the calendar for June 2020.

Firefox scratches above 10%

In the zero-sum browser game — one’s losses means another’s gains — Mozilla Firefox was one of April’s winners. The open-source browser gained a full percentage point, ending the month with 10.2%. The total was Firefox’s highest since March 2018 and the first above 10 points since June that year.

Firefox has given its makers stretches of optimism in the past, but those have been brief, a month, two at consecutive at the most. It’s been nearly two years since Firefox has had a sustained period of growth (five months, from March until July 2017). In plainer terms, that means it would be smart to hold any applause until Firefox demonstrates it can maintain some kind of growth.

Computerworld‘s newest forecast for Firefox predicts the browser’s share will remain above 10 points through this year and at least halfway into next. It’s up to the browser’s engineers and designers to make that happen by continuing the modernization strategy they adopted in late 2017 with the version dubbed “Quantum.”

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ numbers, the combined user share of Microsoft’s IE and Edge also rose, climbing 1.4 points to 14%. The one-month increase was the largest-ever for Microsoft in Computerworld‘s nearly 12 years of recorded data, and the month-end total was the highest since September. Both were likely welcomed in Redmond, which has had to swallow months of data that painted its browsers as sad sacks on the way to oblivion.

IE sees an uptick, too

Look closer at the numbers, though, and Microsoft’s sunny skies turn overcast. Most of the user share increase — 70% of it — came from IE, which even for Microsoft is a dead end. The company halted all IE development long ago after it relegated the browser to legacy status. IE is maintained with monthly security updates, but it will never be better than it is right now.

(Windows’ increase in user share — the OS climbed by about seven-tenths of a percentage point — also assisted in IE’s uptick, giving it a bigger pie to slice.)

Microsoft’s one bright spot was Edge, the browser Microsoft plans to transform with the Chromium rendering and JavaScript engines. Not only did Edge gain user share — up about three-tenths of a percentage point in April, reaching 5.5% — but it boosted its share of all Windows 10 PCs. On the latter, Edge accounted for 12.5% of the browser activity on Windows 10, an increase of six-tenths of a percentage point, making April the fourth straight month where that critical metric was in the black.

In April, Safari dropped a tenth of a point — about what it had gained in March — to lower Apple’s browser to 3.6%. Safari’s smaller share, though, was due to an even bigger fall in macOS’ user share last month. Because Safari runs only on Apple’s platforms, the browser’s position is largely decided by the operating system, although it, like Edge and IE, has seen the share of its native OS erode. The difference in declines meant Safari actually ran on a greater percentage of macOS systems in April than in March; April’s Safari share of macOS was 38.2%, a percentage point increase.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies the visitor sessions rather than count users, as it once did. In other words, Net Applications’ data represents user activity.

Top browsers, March 2019

After a short pause earlier this year to their usage slide, Microsoft’s browsers last month resumed their expected-by-now decline.

According to California-based web metrics company Net Applications, Internet Explorer’s (IE) and Edge’s March combined user share dropped to 12.5%, a half-percentage-point decline. The decrease entirely erased the February uptick. March’s fall was tied to IE, as the legacy browser shed nine-tenths of a percentage point of its user share to end the month at 7.3%, a new low. Meanwhile, Edge grew by four-tenths of a point, to 5.2%, its highest mark since August 2017.

The gap between IE and Edge — just over 2 percentage points — was the narrowest ever, highlighting IE’s inevitable future as a browser doomed to extinction.

Interestingly, IE’s downturn wasn’t coupled to a dip in Windows’ fortunes, as the operating system actually scored one of its relatively rare increases. The bottom line: IE’s usage portion among all Windows PCs — a more accurate measure of its position, as IE runs only on Windows — dropped a full point in March, sliding to 8.4%.

That number has been in decline, of course, just as has IE’s and Edge’s combined share. But IE is a special case, as Microsoft has stopped development — it’s as good as it’ll get — and maintains it only as a backstop for customers, enterprises in large part, who need it to run creaky web apps and display frozen-in-amber intranet websites.

A year ago, IE accounted for nearly twice its March 2019 user share. But the old browser fell below the double-digit bar in December and never recovered. That’s why, even though Microsoft has pledged to support IE11 indefinitely, it’s easy to imagine a day when the Redmond, Wash. company pulls the plug.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies the visitor sessions rather than count users, as it once did. In other words, Net Applications’ data represents user activity.

Edge runs to keep up

Although Edge added to its user share last month, the browser was running to stay in place.

Because its four-tenths of a percentage point gain was matched by a 3.3-point increase by Windows 10, Edge’s portion of all Windows 10 personal computers remained stuck at 11.9%, the same as in February.

In other words, while Edge’s usage increased, it came from the boost in Windows 10 usage, not from a sudden affection for the much-maligned browser. On the plus side, at least Edge’s share of all Windows 10 PCs didn’t fall, something it’s been in a bad habit of doing.

Edge as it now exists is a dead browser walking because Microsoft has committed to retooling it with technologies borrowed from Chromium, the open-source project that feeds into Chrome, Opera and other browsers. But Microsoft needs Edge to stay alive long enough for the transition to take place; if Edge’s importance to Windows 10 users falls much further — when it’s the default, for Pete’s sake — how can it fare when it’s more-or-less a clone of Chrome and the real thing already has a headlock on Windows devices?

Whither Firefox?

Firefox suffered a second straight loss, dropping a tenth of a point to close March at 9.3%, around where it had been back in October 2018.

Mozilla’s browser doesn’t seem to know whether it’s up or down any given month, but it has seemingly settled into a spot that’s neither terribly encouraging for its makers nor depressing enough that its hardcore users rush to ditch it.

Firefox’s user share was below the 10% mark in 10 of the last 12 months. The average monthly user share over that year-long stretch was 9.6%, the median 9.7%. Those numbers meant that Computerworld‘s forecast — as always, based on the 12-month average change in user share — said Firefox will remain in the 8% to 9% range through the rest of this year and into early 2020.

It may not be what Mozilla would like to see, but it’s not the dismal picture of Microsoft’s browsers’ much steeper decline.

Elsewhere, rolling-in-riches Chrome added a full percentage point to its user share, claiming 67.9% as its end mark for March. Chrome’s place was a new record for Google’s browser, only reinforcing its victory over the web. (And contrary to musings a month ago, “peak-Chrome” doesn’t look to be in sight.)

Chrome’s 12-month average hints that the browser will crack 69% in June and 70% in August, an accelerated schedule compared to past months’ calculations.

In March, Apple’s Safari recovered some of the share it misplaced in February, climbing a tenth of a point to 3.7%, which was, coincidentally, its 12-month average. Safari’s larger share, however, was likely due to an even larger boost to macOS user share during March. (Safari last month was used by 37.2% of all systems running macOS, an increase of half a percentage point over February’s number.) Because Safari runs only on Apple’s platforms, the browser’s position is largely decided by the prevalence of the operating system.

Top browsers, February 2019

Microsoft’s browsers stepped back from the edge of the cliff last month, halting, perhaps only temporarily, their years-long slide in usage.

According to web analytics vendor Net Applications, in February IE’s and Edge’s combined user share climbed by half a percentage point to 13%. The increase was the largest since March 2018. Most of the uptick was credited to IE; the legacy browser added three-tenths of a percentage point to its share, ending the month at 8.2%. Edge grew by about two-tenths of a point, to 4.8%, its highest point since September 2017.

However, IE’s gains were less striking when compared against Windows’ own growth for February. Because Windows overall climbed by 1.2 points — ending the month at 87.4% — IE’s share of all Windows browsers climbed by just two-tenths of a point, not the larger three-tenths in absolute value.

Edge took a different turn: With Windows 10’s decline in user share for February — it slid six-tenths of a percentage point to 40.3% — and Edge’s absolute value increase, its share of all Windows 10 browsers rose six-tenths of a point, to 11.9%, the most in that metric since May 2018.

(IE’s share of all Windows browsers and Edge’s share of those run on Windows 10 can be calculated because Microsoft’s pair work only on Windows overall and Windows 10, respectively.)

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies the visitor sessions rather than count users, as it once did. In other words, Net Applications’ data represents user activity.

Edge’s position remains perilous

Nearly three months ago, Microsoft said that during 2019 it would rebuild Edge from the ground up with Google Chrome’s rendering and JavaScript engines. Microsoft has yet to release a preview of the recast Edge to testers in the Windows Insider program.

By adopting code from open-source Chromium project, Microsoft said, it would “create better web compatibility for our customers,” even as it ignored Edge’s dismal status in share. And Edge remained in a precarious position, even after posting impressive growth last month in the share-of-Windows-10 benchmark.

Edge’s 4.8% all-OSes user share was just half that of Firefox, and only 58% of the obsolete IE, which will, Microsoft’s claims notwithstanding, be dispatched to Browser Boot Hill sooner rather than later. For a browser bundled with Windows — bundled, in fact, with the most widely-used version of Windows — and given substantially more of a, well, edge by Microsoft than IE had been given since the settlement of the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust case, Edge’s under-5% mark is an embarrassment. Microsoft’s about-face last year — the move to go “full Chromium” — only confirmed the company’s dissatisfaction.

Edge’s survival won’t be measured by how its user share moves up or down — within limits — until the preview lands on Insiders’ PCs. At that point, Edge’s share of Windows 10 will be under the microscope, its flows and ebbs dissected for insight into Microsoft’s decision to join Chrome and Opera in relying on Chromium.

(It’s unclear when the Chromium-based Edge will be issued to the general Windows 10 public.)

Firefox loses it

Two steps forward. One step back.

That was the story for Firefox since November, when for two consecutive months it gained user share, scratching out of an under-9% hole to almost reach 10%. In February, though, the open-source browser retreated, losing half a percentage point and slumping to 9.4%, about where it was part way through December.

The step back altered Computerworld‘s forecast for Firefox again. A month ago, the prediction was that the browser would stay above 9% through 2019. The latest prediction — as always, based on Firefox’s 12-month average — accelerates the downturn, with the sub-9% mark set for May and under-8% for December. Mozilla badly needs Firefox share growth to demonstrate that the browser’s November 2017 revamp was not only worth the time and money but would lead to a true turnaround.

Portents do not paint a rosy picture for Firefox. The browser’s user share has been in the single digits for eight straight months and for nine of the last 10.

Elsewhere, Chrome lost four-tenths of a percentage point in February to close at 66.9, still above the two-thirds bar. Meanwhile, Apple’s Safari also dropped four-tenths of a point, leaving it with just 3.6%, its lowest mark since April 2017.

Even with Chrome’s slip, the most popular browser’s trend line remains enviable: The 12-month average indicates it would crack 68% in May and 70% in September. In each case, the newest prognostications are two months later than the previous ones. Chrome hasn’t posted back-to-back declines in almost six years, so it bears close watching this month for clues that “peak-Chrome” has arrived.

Safari’s fall looked much more serious, as it could little afford to lose share; the browser has been under 4% for 11 out of the last 12 months.

More troubling was last month’s decline in Safari’s share of all browsers used on Macs. Net Applications’ numbers attributed just 36.7% of on-Mac usage to Safari, the second-lowest number ever. (January’s portion had been 37.8%, significantly higher than the record low of 35.1% in December.) Mac owners, like those sitting in front of Windows systems, have clearly not been immune to the siren call of alternatives, notably Chrome.

Top browsers, January 2019

Mozilla’s Firefox wrapped up a two-month resurgence this week, clawing back some previously-lost user share to return to a level last seen in the middle of 2018.

The open-source browser remains the only major browser committed to using a rendering engine that is not based on Google’s Blink or its predecessor, WebKit.

According to web analytics vendor Net Applications, Firefox’s share rose by three-tenths of a percentage point in January, reaching 9.9%. The increase was the second consecutive month of user share growth and put Firefox back where it was last June.

Firefox’s gains were important, as the browser flirted with dangerous territory as recently as November, when it slumped to below 9%. The trend at the time looked nasty; if the declines had continued at the 12-month average pace, Firefox would have fallen below 7% by August 2019.

The increases of the last two months have altered that forecast. The 12-month average, if continued, would still erode Firefox’s user share, but at a much slower tempo: the browser should remain above 9% throughout this year, falling under that bar only in January 2020.

If Mozilla maintains the Firefox user share recovery, its efforts to revitalize the browser — starting with the November 2017 debut of Firefox Quantum — will be validated. What’s unclear is whether that work will simply let Firefox survive or if it can trigger a return to a time when the browser was in solid second place (then behind IE) with a quarter of the world’s share.

The browser maker does have a message that may resonate in 2019: On Windows, it will soon be the only major browser running on non-Google technologies. In December, Microsoft announced that it would abandon its home-grown rendering and JavaScript engines for those built by Chromium, the open-source project led by Google. Mozilla has already used that to argue people should download and try Firefox, and certainly will do so again.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people run to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies the visitor sessions rather than count users, as it once did. In other words, Net Applications’ data best illustrates user activity.

IE sinks, Edge doesn’t

Microsoft’s browsers — Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge — also gained ground in January, adding approximately two-tenths of a percentage point to put their combined shares at 12.6%. The increase wasn’t unprecedented, as the browsers posted in-the-black numbers four out of the 12 months in 2019. One month does not a trend make, however.

The increase was solely due to Edge, which rose by half a percentage point to 4.6%, a number that meant about 11% of all Windows 10 users ran the browser in January. The latter figure has been an important metric, as it has showed the enthusiasm (or lack thereof) for the Windows 10-only browser. Plainly put, there has been little to none, although it also has occasionally climbed rather than fallen.

Microsoft’s decision to go “full-Chromium” with Edge — to effectively give up the fight against Chrome’s dominance and join it by crafting a doppelgänger — was a bet that the browser could survive, even grow, under that strategy. The question is whether there will be much of an Edge left by the time Microsoft switches technologies. As a result, January’s uptick had to be welcome by Microsoft.

On the other hand, IE dropped nearly four-tenths of a percentage point last month, sliding to 7.9%, a record low for the browser that once lorded it over the world — at least the worldwide web — with as much impunity as any of history’s monarchs. IE was used on about 9% of all Windows PCs in January, also an all-time low.

Microsoft may well applaud the downward spiral of IE, as the browser has been maintained solely for legacy purposes in enterprises. There are, in fact, good arguments to be made that Microsoft will drop IE as soon as it has built “full-Chromium” Edge.

Chrome grabs more share…yawn

Net Applications pegged Chrome’s user share at 67.3% for January, a one-tenth of a percentage point boost. It was the ninth increase in the previous 12 months.

Google’s browser remained on a steep trend line, with its 12-month average indicating it would crack 68% in March and 70% in July. Each time Chrome takes a pause that could be interpreted as a high-water mark, within a month or two it jumps up again to maintain momentum.

Elsewhere, Apple’s Safari added three-tenths of a percentage point to its user share, ending January with an even 4%, the browser’s highest mark since April 2018. Its portion of all Macs also grew, climbing to 37.8% — or more than two-and-a-half points above December — even though the operating system share of macOS remained above 10.6% for the second straight month.

Top browsers, December 2018

By the time Microsoft manages to refit its Edge browser with Chrome’s engines, there might not be much of an Edge there.

Microsoft’s browsers — Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge — jettisoned the most user share in over a year last month, falling to a record low. Meanwhile, Edge’s share of all Windows 10 PCs, a metric Computerworld views as the most accurate reflection of user acceptance, also dropped to a new low.

According to web analytics company Net Applications, IE’s and Edge’s combined share plunged by 1.5 percentage points to end 2018 at 12.4%. The decline was the largest since September 2017, excepting a larger share sell-off two months later when Net Applications purged its data of fraudsters’ bots. Most of the drop-off was due to users fleeing IE; the obsolete browser lost 1.3 percentage points all by itself, slumping to 8.3 percentage points. Edge shed slightly more than one-tenth of a point, more-or-less tying its former record low, first set in September 2018.

The continued deterioration of IE’s position was expected, most of all by Microsoft, which three years ago sidelined the browser, telling customers it was useful only on some Windows 7 PCs and even fewer Windows 10 systems, where it was nothing more than a sop to legacy requirements. Microsoft halted all development on IE in early 2016 and since then has only serviced the browser with patches to block newly-reported vulnerabilities.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people run to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies the visitor sessions rather than count users, as it once did. In other words, Net Applications’ data represents user activity.

Edge, the choice of just 10%

Last month, Microsoft announced it would recreate Edge using the same rendering and JavaScript engines that drive Google’s Chrome. By adopting the results of the open-source Chromium project, Microsoft said, it would “create better web compatibility for our customers.” The company said nothing about Edge’s dismal position as an afterthought on its sole-supported OS.

By Net Applications’ numbers, Edge in December accounted for just 10.4% of the browser user share on Windows 10, a decline of seven-tenths of a percentage point from the month prior and the lowest ever in the three-and-a-half years since 10’s launch.

The decline was exacerbated by a one-two punch: Edge’s drop in absolute numbers and the growth of Windows 10 (by 1.1 percentage points, to 39.2% of all personal computers and 45.5% of all PCs running Windows). The combination magnified the small decline in absolute share when calculated as a portion of all Windows 10.

That’s been Edge’s problem all along. Growth, when it occurred, never kept pace with Windows 10’s. And when that growth slowed and began to decline — Edge peaked in August 2017 — the relative importance of the browser to Windows 10 users evaporated. Worse times are to come. If Microsoft’s new plan to go “full Chromium” with Edge doesn’t alter trends, a year from now the browser’s share of Windows 10 will have shrunk to around 6.5%.

Firefox recovers — for now — from another near-death experience

Net Applications pegged Firefox’s user share at 9.6% for December, a six-tenths of a percentage point boost from November. It was the largest increase for the open-source browser since November 2017, when it was still clawing its way out of a mid-year 7.7% user share grave.

The growth changed Computerworld‘s forecast for Firefox. A month ago, the prediction was that the browser would slip below 8% in March and beneath 7% by August. Although the auguries — based on Firefox’s 12-month average — remain in the red, the latest puts the browser above 9% until May, above 8% until January 2020.

Mozilla must maintain growth to demonstrate that Firefox really has a future, of course, something easier written than made reality. December’s increase could well be a one-month blip, not the beginning of some kind of real turnaround.

Elsewhere in the December data, Google’s Chrome gained 1.6 percentage points, ending the month at 67.2%. The increase was Chrome’s fourth of 2018 that exceeded a full point.

As forecast, Chrome broke through the two-thirds mark — albeit a month earlier than anticipated — and continued a march to what may be an unassailable browser supremacy. Using the 12-month average, Chrome could hit 70% in June 2019 and 75% in March 2020.

Apple’s Safari stayed flat at 3.7% in December but because of an increase in the share of macOS/OS X, the portion of Mac users running Safari dropped to 35.1%. That’s the lowest Safari share of all Macs since Computerworld began recording data in mid-2015. Apple’s laissez-faire attitude toward Safari on the desktop — the browser gets an upgrade only once a year — has weakened its hold on Mac owners. Safari may be the next browser to be “Edged,” or rendered moot as an operating system’s default.

Top browsers, November 2018

Microsoft’s browsers last month staved off decline for the first time since June, managing to hold on to their share of the market even as Mozilla watched more users desert Firefox.

According to U.S. analytics vendor Net Applications, Internet Explorer’s and Edge’s share rallied in November, increasing by one-tenth of a percentage point to close the month at 13.9%. The boost to Microsoft’s browser fortunes came entirely from the if-not-obsolete-then-certainly-creaky IE, which scratched back to 9.6%. Edge, the default for Windows 10 and the browser Microsoft has pinned hopes to, remained flat at 4.2%, the same ground it occupied in October.

The rise of IE was ironic, since Microsoft long ago demoted the browser, saying it was suitable only for the soon-to-be-retired Windows 7 and for Windows 10, as a legacy stop-gap. Microsoft stopped improving or enhancing the browser, specifically IE11, in early 2016. Since then, the Redmond, Wash. company has only serviced the browser with security updates.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people run to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm then tallies the visitor sessions rather than count users, as it once did. In plainer terms, Net Applications’ data represents user activity.

IE and Edge, on the edge

Microsoft’s browsers may have kept heads above water in November, but their past performance signals that the effort will be short lived.

Since January 2015, IE’s and Edge’s increases have been brief: no longer than two consecutive months. Three of the four post-2015 periods of increases have been but a single month, with declines returning the next.

The only plus for Microsoft is that in the last 12 months, five have seen increases (including November’s). That’s the most positive 12-month stretch since 2013, when IE recovered some share from a years’-long downturn. The 5-in-12 may hint that Microsoft’s browsers may be ready to stabilize, rather than disappear entirely.

However, the latter remains a distinct possibility. Even with the five months’ of increases, IE + Edge shed 2.4 percentage points in the last 12 and 2.2 points in just the last six months. And at the current average monthly movement, Microsoft’s browsers will slip under 13% in March and fall below 12% in August 2019. A year from now, the browsers could be in the psychologically-dangerous 10% range.

Firefox falls below 9%

Net Applications pegged Firefox’s user share at 8.96% for November, a three-tenths of a percentage point decline from October. It was the first time that the open-source browser ended the month with less than 9% since May 2016, during a stretch when Firefox flirted with disaster.

Computerworld‘s forecast — calculated using Firefox’s 12-month average — now puts the browser below 8% in March and beneath the 7% comatose bar by August.

Firefox has been near death, and recovered, before: In mid-2016, the browser plummeted to 7.7%, yet by year’s end had climbed back to 12.2%. But this latest string of user desertions must concern Mozilla: Firefox has been under 10% for six out of the last seven months. That’s not happened since the browser was on the upswing in late 2005 and early 2006.

Elsewhere in the November data, Google’s Chrome lost nine-tenths of a percentage point, ending the month at 65.6%. The loss was Chrome’s largest one-month drop since August 2013.

It’s unclear whether the substantial decline forecasts that Chrome’s explosive growth is nearing an end. (Chrome gained an astounding 24.1 points of user share in 2016, for example.) Past dips have been temporary, for one thing; for another, Chrome is still up five percentage points over the last 12 months.

Computerworld‘s forecast remains rosy for Google’s browser: Using the 12-month average, Chrome should crack the two-thirds mark in January and reach 68% in April.

Apple’s Safari stayed flat at 3.7% in November. During the month, 38.5% of all Mac owners ran Safari, a slight improvement over October. (Another browser that runs on a single platform — Edge — accounted for only 11.1% of all Windows 10 users’ activity, a record low.)

Top browsers, October 2018

Microsoft’s browsers last month continued to slouch toward invisibility as the combined user share of Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge fell to yet another record low.

According to California-based analytics company Net Applications, IE’s and Edge’s share dropped by a quarter of a percentage point in October, ending at 13.8%, a record for the century and a number not seen by Microsoft since IE first took on Netscape Navigator in the 1990s.

On its own IE — the 23-year-old browser last updated nearly three years ago — slipped nearly half a percentage point to just 9.5%. (Edge, the default browser for Windows 10, made up for some of IE’s decline by climbing a quarter of a point.)

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people run to reach clients’ websites. The firm then tallies the visitor sessions — site visits, essentially, with multiple sessions possible daily — rather than count users, as it once did. In plainer terms, Net Applications’ data represents browser user activity.

What’s happening to IE and Edge?

Microsoft’s browsers have been trapped in a repetitive story of decline, decline and more decline.

After years of dominance, IE started its free fall after Microsoft announced that Windows users would be forced to upgrade to the latest version. Since then, IE has lost 84% of the user share it owned in August 2014, when the company delivered the upgrade-or-else ultimatum. Those losses accelerated in the months after January 2016, when the requirement began to be enforced.

The long-term result? Disaster.

There have been only the most fleeting of signals that the decline of IE, or even IE + Edge, will stop. Any pause in the downward trip has been fleeting — at most, two months — and always immediately followed by losses that erase the upswing.

At the current average monthly loss, IE + Edge will slip under 13% in December, drop below 12% in February 2019 and fall beneath 11% in April. The browsers could breach the psychological barrier of 10% by June.

Pin the blame on IE: In the last four months, IE has lost an estimated 45.6 million users. That’s significantly more users than ran Apple’s Safari browser last month (about 37.5 million).

IE’s decay should come as no surprise, least of all to Microsoft. IE11, which accounted for about 84% of all versions run in October, was demoted to legacy status in January 2016. At that time, Microsoft stopped all IE development, saying it would service the browser with security fixes only. IE11 is akin to an amber-trapped bug from the Cretaceous period; it hasn’t changed, even though competitors like Chrome and Firefox have furiously added features and functionality.

Meanwhile, Edge has been unable to capitalize on the decline of IE. Windows 10 users, the only ones who can run the browser, have rejected Edge. Over the last four months, as IE shed three full percentage points of user share, Edge’s needle moved an almost-imperceptible three-hundredths of one percent. Just 11% of all Windows 10 users ran Edge in October.

Firefox freak-out time?

Net Applications said Firefox’s user share slid another four-tenths of a percentage point in October. The open-source browser ended the month with a 9.3% share, its lowest mark in more than two years. Computerworld‘s forecast — calculated using Firefox’s 12-month average — now puts the browser below 9% sometime this month, under 8% in February and beneath a barely-breathing 7% come May.

Firefox has clawed back from the abyss before — in the summer of 2016, the browser slumped to just 7.7%, but came out of that trough — so no one should write it off. But the prolonged user share funk certainly warrants thought of at least a minor freak-out: Firefox has been under 10% for four straight months and five out of the last six.

Later this month, Mozilla will celebrate the one-year anniversary of the release of Quantum, a major revamp of Firefox’s UI (user interface) and the debut of a new rendering engine that dramatically boosted page load speeds. Net Applications’ numbers, however, show that Quantum failed to arrest the user share slide.

Elsewhere in the October data, Google’s Chrome added approximately two-tenths of a percentage point to its already-massive share, closing out the month with 66.4%, just a bit shy of the two-thirds milestone.

Chrome’s climb has not slowed: Its 6-month average increase was more than half again as large as the 12-month average. Using the latter as a guide, the browser could crack the 70% mark by May. Only Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Netscape’s Navigator have been that dominant.

Apple’s Safari gained two-tenths of a percentage point, reaching 3.7%, its highest since April. But during October, only 37.6% of all Mac owners ran Safari. Like Windows users, they have largely dispensed with their operating system’s default in favor of a cross-platform alternative such as Chrome or Firefox.

Top browsers, September 2018

Microsoft’s tired Internet Explorer (IE) last month slumped below 10% for the first time, dragging down the company’s total browser user share to a record low.

According to California analytics vendor Net Applications, IE’s user share plummeted by nine-tenths of a percentage point in September, falling to 9.94%. The bulk of that — approximately 83% — was accounted for by IE 11, the final version of the 23-year-old browser. It’s IE 11 that is run in Windows 7 and Windows 10; the browser is relegated to legacy status on the latter.

Together, IE and Edge — the default browser for Windows 10 — controlled just 14% of the September global user share, a decline of 1.1 percentage points from the month prior. That 14% figure was a record low for this century.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people run to reach the company’s clients’ sites. The firm tallies the visitor sessions — site visits, essentially, with multiple sessions possible daily — rather than count users, as it once did. Net Applications thus measures activity differently than rival firms that total page views.

The IE and Edge slide

IE’s September slip-and-slide was nothing new: The browser has been in a tailspin since Microsoft announced it would require Windows users to upgrade to the latest version. IE has plummeted 48.5 points, equivalent to a decline of 83%, in the four-plus years since the 2014 announcement that triggered Microsoft’s browser disaster.

At the current average monthly loss, IE + Edge will drop beneath 13% by December, under 12% by February 2019 and below 10% by next July. While Computerworld‘s forecasts have at times missed marks, Microsoft’s assumed fall is built on some fundamental facts. First and foremost, because IE has received only security updates since January 2016 it has not been refreshed for more than two and a half years. In plainer terms, it’s at least that far behind rivals like Chrome and Firefox.

Second, Edge has been marginalized — pushed to the edge of irrelevance — on Windows 10. In September, just 10.9% of all Windows 10 users relied on Edge, a half percentage point reduction and another new low for the browser Microsoft hoped would turn the tables.

Instead, Google’s Chrome became the bully that regularly shook down Microsoft for its user share lunch money.

Google Chrome continues its streak

Chrome added a full percentage point of user share last month to reach 66.3%, a record for the cross-platform browser. In the last 12 months, Chrome has gained 6.7 percentage points, the only one among the top four browsers to raise its total during that span.

If the trend of the last year continues unabated, Chrome will account for two-thirds of all user share at some point this month. Chrome could account for 70% of the global share as soon as April 2019 and an amazing 75% by January 2020.

No current browser can realistically be viewed as a worthy competitor to Chrome. Microsoft’s Edge has clearly failed to energize Windows 10 users, Apple’s Safari is restricted to the macOS enclave and Mozilla’s Firefox teeters on the wire between survival and extinction.

Net Applications pegged Firefox’s user share change as down more than a tenth of a percentage point. The open-source browser ended September with a 9.6% share, its lowest mark in two years. Calculations using the 12-month average predicted the browser will fall under 9% by December, and below 8% by April 2019.

Elsewhere in the September data, Apple’s Safari lost less than one-tenth of a percentage point, descending to 3.6%. During September, only 38% of all Mac owners ran Safari as their primary browser. Like Windows users, they have shifted from their operating system’s default to a cross-platform alternative, most likely Chrome.

Top browsers, August 2018

Google’s Chrome last month continued to creep up on a two-thirds supermajority of browser share, while Microsoft’s once-dominant position deteriorated. Again.

According to analytics company Net Applications, Chrome’s user share climbed half a percentage point in August, reaching 65.2%, an all-time high. In the last 12 months, Chrome has gained 5.9 percentage points, the only browser of the top four — others include Apple’s Safari, Microsoft’s Edge and Internet Explorer (IE), and Mozilla’s Firefox — to add to its total during that period.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to visit its clients’ websites. The firm then tallies the visitor sessions — which are effectively visits to the site, with multiple sessions possible daily — rather than count only users, as it once did. Net Applications primarily measures activity, although it does so differently than rival sources, which total page views.

If the trend of the last 12 months continue, Chrome will take the two-thirds prize in November. Barring any change in the browser battle, Chrome will account for 70% of the global share by June 2019.

The only other browsers to have accumulated that much share since the web broke out of its academia-government ghetto in the 1990s were Netscape’s Navigator and Microsoft’s IE. The former faded under assault from the latter, vanishing for good in early 2008; IE is following in its one-time rival’s footsteps.

Whither Edge and IE?

Microsoft’s combined Edge and IE user share slipped two-tenths of a percentage point last month, falling to 15.2%, another record low this century. During the four years since Microsoft announced it would require Windows users to upgrade to the latest version of IE — in effect, pulling the plug on the still-popular IE8, IE9 and IE 10 — the browser has plummeted 43.3 points, representing a massive decline of 74%.

At their current average monthly loss, IE + Edge will drop beneath 14% by November, under 12% by March 2019 and below 10% by next July. While nothing is guaranteed — including Computerworld‘s forecasting — there are solid reasons why Microsoft’s user share will almost certainly keep falling.

First, IE has been demoted to legacy status and now receives security updates only; it will be disowned by commercial customers as they migrate to Windows 10 and, more importantly, update and modernize the web apps and websites that force them to support the aged browser.

Second, Edge has never taken up the slack. In August, just 11.4% of all Windows 10 users relied on Edge, a drop of one-tenth of a point and another record low for the browser.

According to Net Applications, IE and Edge accounted for 17.3% of the browsers that ran on Windows in August. (The 17.3% was larger than the 15.2% IE and Edge tallied overall because Windows did not power 100% of all PCs; in August, it ran 87.8% of the world’s systems.)

Firefox: Running in place?

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ data, Mozilla’s Firefox picked up nearly one-tenth of a percentage point, clawing back to 9.8%. The open-source browser, which Mozilla revamped in late 2017 and aggressively updates with new features in an attempt to stop the losses, continues to have a dim future by Net Applications’ numbers. Calculations using the 12-month average change predicte that the browser will dip under 9% by December and keep falling.

By May 2019, Firefox could have a scary user share of just 7.9%.

Apple’s Safari added approximately two-tenths of a percentage point last month to edge up to 3.7%. As of August, 39% of all Mac owners ran Safari as their primary browser, showing that they, too, have largely abandoned their operating system’s default browser for cross-platform alternatives like Chrome or Firefox.

Top browsers, July 2018

Microsoft’s and Mozilla’s browsers fell to new lows in July as users continued to switch to Google’s behemoth, Chrome, which again looks unstoppable.

According to California-based analytics vendor Net Applications, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge dropped to a combined user share of 15.4% last month, down a whopping 3.8 percentage points from June. Meanwhile, Mozilla’s Firefox cast off a much smaller two-tenths of a percentage point, recording a user share of 9.7%. Microsoft’s July number was a record low in Computerworld‘s tracking of browser data, which began in 2005. Firefox’s figure was its smallest user share since February 2006, when it was fighting for the scraps left by the then-dominant IE.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to visit its clients’ websites. It then tallies the visitor sessions — which are effectively visits to the site, with multiple sessions possible daily — rather than count only users, as it once did. Net Applications primarily measures activity, although it does so differently than rival sources, which total page views.

Microsoft’s and Mozilla’s browser problems are not new: Both companies have watched their once-substantial user share shrink over the last decade.

A long downhill slide

Microsoft’s troubles appeared more dire, as its IE and Edge have shown few signs of stanching their continued losses. With very few exceptions — notably in June, which in hindsight now looks to have been a miscount by Net Applications — IE and Edge have shed share month after month after month. Of the past 24 months, for example, IE and Edge lost share in 19. In the last year, the IE-and-Edge user share dropped by 6.8 percentage points, a 31% decline from the July 31, 2017 mark.

Firefox was in a leaky boat, too. July was the third consecutive month in which Mozilla’s open-source browser posted a number under the 10% bar. In the past year, Firefox has lost 2.6 percentage points, or 21% of its July 31, 2017, user share.

Losses like Microsoft’s and Mozilla’s are unsustainable.

If the trends of the last 12 months continue and IE and Edge lose another 31% in the next year, they will account for just 10.6% of the world’s browser user share by this time in 2019. If Firefox again drops by 21%, it will fall to 7.6% in the same period. (Because IE and Edge lost more than twice as much each of the last 12 months as Firefox, Microsoft’s browsers will fall faster than Mozilla’s under this forecasting model.)

Ironically, Firefox may have the best shot at beating that prediction. That’s because Firefox survived a near-death experience relatively recently to bounce back to some degree. Two years ago this month, Net Applications reported that Firefox’s user share had sunk to a record low of just 7.7%. But over the next year and two months, the browser clawed itself back to 13.1%. (Since October 2017, Firefox has lost share in all but one month.)

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer — Edge was not yet around — had a come-back, too: IE climbed from a December 2011 flirtation with 50% to grow to 59.1% three years later. But IE, and then IE + Edge, have lost ground, first slowly, then more rapidly, since December 2014. In other words, Microsoft’s browser slide has been on-going for more than three and a half years, significantly longer than Firefox’s nine-month decline.

An ominous future for IE and Edge

The future of IE and Edge look nearly as ominous if the user share calculation considers their place within the Windows ecosystem, the only platform available to the browsers. According to Net Applications, IE and Edge accounted for 17.4% of the browsers that ran on Windows in July. (The 17.4% was larger than the 15.4% IE and Edge tallied overall because Windows does not power 100% of all PCs; in July, it ran 88.4% of the world’s systems.) Darker clouds await, however. IE, already relegated to legacy status, will increasingly be disowned by commercial customers as they adopt Windows 10 and modernize the web apps and websites that now require them to support the old browser. That will leave Edge as the only competitive browser in Microsoft’s arsenal.

And Edge remains a flop. In July, just 11.5% of all Windows 10 users relied on Edge, a record low for the long-struggling browser. To get an idea of Edge’s loose hold on Windows 10, consider that the browser was being used by almost twice the percentage of 10’s owners, 20.4%, only 12 months ago.

In the zero-sum browser battle, Microsoft’s and Mozilla’s losses became Google’s gains: Chrome added nearly 4 percentage points to its user share in July, ending at 64.7%. The last time a browser owned that large a chunk of the world’s browser market was in late 2009, when IE accounted for two-thirds of the total.

Calculations by Computerworld now put Chrome on a faster track to that same two-thirds dominance. Using the average monthly change over the past 12 months, Computerworld now expects Chrome to reach 66.7% or more in December and make it to 70% by August 2019.

The 12-month average for Microsoft’s and Mozilla’s browsers paints a different picture. IE and Edge will account for less than 12% of all user share by February 2019, then fall under 10% by May. Firefox will continue its decline as well, slipping below 9% in November and dipping under 8% in March 2019.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ data, the user share number for Apple’s Safari fell for the third straight month, ending at 3.5%, its lowest since April 2017. Safari’s share of all macOS-powered systems also dropped to 38.3% in July, reinforcing Computerworld‘s analysis last month that being an operating system’s default browser no longer guarantees success.

Top browsers, June 2018

The browsers bundled with operating systems, notably Microsoft’s Edge and Apple’s Safari, fell to new lows last month as they continued to lose users, showing that being the default no longer provided a significant advantage.

According to California-based analytics vendor Net Applications, Edge’s share of all Windows 10 personal computers and Safari’s share of all Macs dropped to record lows in June. Edge, the default for Microsoft’s newest operating system, was the preferred browser on only 11.8% of all Windows 10 systems. Meanwhile, Safari, the browser packaged with macOS (and before that, OS X), ran on 38.4% of all Mac machines.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to visit its clients’ websites. It then tallies the visitor sessions — which are effectively visits to the site, with multiple sessions possible daily — rather than count only users, as it once did. Net Applications thus primarily measures activity, although it does so differently than rival metrics sources, which focus on page views.

Edge’s popularity among Windows 10 users has been in decline since the OS debuted three years ago. A year ago, for example, Edge was the browser of choice for about 22% of all Windows 10 PC users. Two years ago, that number was about 27%.

At first, Edge’s problem was that its user share did not grow at the same pace as Windows 10’s. Even as Edge’s user share of all PCs increased, albeit slowly, its share of all Windows 10 devices fell month after month as the operating system added users in larger numbers than did Edge. The news for Edge got even worse, however, around September 2017, when the browser’s user share (of all PCs) began to fall, reducing its share of all Windows 10 machines even more.

There’s no other way to put it: Edge is a flop. In the face of some significant barriers put up by Microsoft — among them a multistep process to change Windows 10’s browser default — users have clearly rejected the browser. If all users of Windows 10 were represented by, say, a baseball team, only one of the nine players would be browsing with Edge.

It’s impossible to tell from publicly available data such as Net Applications’ what browser is the most popular on Windows 10 — Edge’s share can be calculated because it runs solely on Windows 10 — but the most likely suspect is Chrome. Google’s browser lost 2.1 percentage points of user share in June, falling to 60.7%. But it remained the No. 1 personal computer browser on the planet by a huge margin: Second-place was held by the effectively obsolete Internet Explorer (IE), with a user share of 15%.

Apple’s Safari has traced a track similar to Edge’s over the past two and a half years.

At the start of 2016, Safari was the preferred browser for about two-thirds of all Mac owners, a fraction that had been remarkably stable for some time. Within a year, Safari’s hold on Macs had weakened to the point where it barely held on to half of all machines. By January 2018, its share of all Macs had dropped to 43%.

June was the first time that Safari’s share of all Macs slipped under 40%, posting just over 38%.

As with Edge, it is impossible to know which browser or browsers replaced Safari for those Mac owners who ditched Apple’s. Chrome is the likeliest replacement because of its massive user share, but other possibilities include Mozilla’s Firefox and lower-tier browsers such as Opera Software’s Opera.

Safari’s inability to hold on to the Mac based on its default status is also more puzzling than Edge’s.

Microsoft’s browsers began their decline when the company forced Windows users to upgrade to the most recent version of IE and terminated some versions’ support early. The mandate kicked in in January 2016.

But by opening the door to change, Microsoft triggered a massive user desertion. As millions of users and businesses were told they had to switch browsers, they instead used the opportunity to abandon Microsoft’s and install rivals’, notably Chrome.

Although IE lost significant share — about 11 percentage points — in the 12 months before the deadline (Microsoft had first told customers of the new policy in August 2014), IE shed twice as much, around 22 points, in the 12 months after the mandated move.

Apple never demanded anything similar of its Mac users and continued to support Safari for the current version of macOS and the two previous versions.

One theory is that as Chrome replaced IE on users’ at-work Windows PCs, people followed suit on their at-home Macs, so they could, for instance, synchronize data such as passwords and bookmarks. In companies that supported both PCs and Macs, the Microsoft order may have sparked a similar shift from IE to Chrome, with Macs also adopting Google’s browser as those firms turned toward browser homogeneity.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ data, the user share numbers reported that Firefox, which slipped under the 10% bar in April, remained stable in June at the same 9.9%.

Top browsers, May 2018

Mozilla’s Firefox landed on a slippery slope last month and may face a slow demise as users desert the browser for Google’s Chrome.

According to California-based analytics vendor Net Applications, Firefox lost a quarter of a percentage point of user share in May, ending the month at 9.9%. It was the first time Firefox has fallen below the 10% marker since November 2016.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to visit its clients’ websites. It then tallies the visitor sessions — which are effectively visits to the site, with multiple sessions possible daily — rather than count only users, as it once did. Net Applications thus measures activity most of all, although differently than rival metrics sources that focus on page views.

Eight years ago, Firefox accounted for more than a quarter of the globe’s browser share. That’s fallen to less than a tenth. More importantly, the trend for Firefox looks ugly. If the six-month average holds, Firefox will drop below 9% by September, then slide under 8% by January 2019.

Mozilla

While Mozilla may have access to different data — it should know, for instance, whether the active-user count is up or down — Net Applications’ numbers must be tough to swallow. The company has poured time and resources into revamping Firefox, which produced “Quantum” late last year. But the redesign failed to stop the browser’s drip-drip-drip of user share.

Other browsers also got bad news in May.

Microsoft’s browsers — Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge — shed seven-tenths of a percentage point last month, accounting for 16.1% of all visitor sessions worldwide. The decline erased two consecutive months of gains by IE and Edge. Like Firefox, IE and Edge are on a downward line; the six-month trend forecasts that they will dip below 16% by September.

That number will fall even more as the months tick by, and more enterprises discard Windows 7 for Windows 10. IE has been downgraded to a legacy application — suitable for running older web apps and sites, though with all but maintenance servicing abandoned — and as corporations revamp their apps, the need for it will vanish. And Edge has simply been a flop: In May, only about one in eight Windows 10 users ran the browser, a record low in its three-year history.

Even Apple’s Safari took a hit. The default Mac browser lost three-tenths of a percentage point to finish at 3.7%, the lowest number in nearly a year. And Apple’s “Chrome Disease” continued to progress, with no cure in sight, as just 41% of Mac users relied on Safari in May. The bulk of the rest had almost certainly deserted Apple for Google and its Chrome browser.

Chrome, in fact, gained an impressive 1.2 percentage points in May, the largest one-month increase since January 2017. The additional user share pushed Chrome to 62.8%, closing in on two of every three desktop and laptop browsers. The last time a browser had such a dominating position was more than eight years ago, when IE accounted for 63.2% of all user share.

If the six-month trend holds true, Chrome should pass the 64% milestone sometime in September, and zip above 65% before New Year’s Day.

Top browsers, April 2018

Microsoft’s browsers have scratched out user share gains in three of the last five months, halting what late last year looked like a death spiral.

Less than half of the half-a-percentage point increase since November has come from Edge, the Windows 10 browser Microsoft has bet on for the foreseeable future.

According to data published Tuesday by California-based analytics vendor Net Applications, Microsoft’s Edge and Internet Explorer (IE) combined to account for 16.8% of the browser market during April. The one-tenth of a point increase over March was near the browsers’ five-month average.

The rosier outlook for Microsoft’s browsers stood in contrast to earlier forecasts based on Net Applications’ numbers. The reason for the change: The metrics company again went back into its data, this time for February, and revised its numbers after expelling bot traffic.

As it did in November, Net Applications purged the bot traffic because it skews results. These software-based tools are usually deployed by criminals and hucksters, who program the bots’ automated scripts to mimic human online behavior, often for ad click fraud purposes.

“Bots can cause significant skewing of data,” Net Applications explained last year. “We have seen situations where traffic from certain large countries is almost completely bot traffic. In other countries, ad fraudsters generate traffic that spoofs certain technologies in order to generate high-value clicks. Or, they heavily favor a particular browser or platform.”

The revised data put Microsoft’s browsers in a slightly better light, with increases to both Edge and IE since November’s retuning. There’s little indication that either browser actually grew its user share — as opposed to the bot scouring causing the gains — because both Edge and IE added to their share. As a second-class browser since Microsoft relegated it to legacy support duties, IE is unlikely to climb in user share.

Of Microsoft’s two browsers, Edge was responsible for just under half — 48% — of the November-to-April increase; IE accounted for the remaining 52%.

Mozilla’s Firefox did not benefit from Net Applications’ latest bot cleansing, as it again shed share in April, losing four-tenths of a percentage point to end at 10.2%. That was after March’s decline of six-tenths of a point to 10.5%.

As Computerworld has pointed out several times since Mozilla launched a revamped Firefox labeled “Quantum,” the redesign and associated attention has failed to stop the browser’s long bleeding of user share. In the five months since Quantum’s debut, Firefox has lost 1.3 percentage points, which represented 11% of its end-of-November share.

If the trend over the past five months continues, Firefox will slip under the 10% user share bar this month, and fall below 9% by September.

Meanwhile, the user share of Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari fell and climbed, respectively, last month. Chrome lost almost a tenth of a percentage point, slipping to 61.7%, while Safari scratched out another half of one-tenth of a point to make an even 4%.

However, Safari continued to lose ground where it counts, on Apple’s Mac systems. Like Microsoft, Apple has been laid low by “Chrome Disease,” as more of its Mac owners have deserted the company’s own browser (Safari) for an alternative (almost certainly Chrome for the most part). Although Safari was the browser of choice for as much as two-thirds of those running OS X (the former name for macOS), Safari slipped into the minority on Apple machines in December. Last month, Safari was the primary browser on just 43% of all Macs.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to visit its clients’ websites. It then tallies the visitor sessions — which are effectively visits to the site, with multiple sessions possible daily — rather than count only users, as it once did. Net Applications thus tracks both users as well as their activity, where rivals analytics sources focus solely on the later.

The company also accounts for the size of each country’s online population to better estimate share in regions where it lacks analytics customers, such as China and India.

Top browsers, March 2018

Mozilla’s radical overhaul of its financial cornerstone, Firefox, has so far failed in its primary mission, to stop the slide in browser share, new data published Sunday showed.

According to new numbers from California-based analytics vendor Net Applications, Firefox lost six-tenths of a percentage point of user share in March. That was the largest decline in almost two years, excepting November 2017, when Net Applications revamped its tallies by eliminating fraudulent bot traffic from its data.

For March, Firefox’s user share — an estimate of the portion of the world’s PC owners who ran the browser in a given period — was 10.3%, the lowest since a near-death experience in the summer of 2016, when it plunged to below 8%. At one point — April 2010, to be specific — Firefox accounted for more than a quarter of the globe’s browser share.

More distressing to Mozilla, Firefox’s user share has fallen rather than climbed since the November launch of Quantum, a.k.a. version 57, which the company trumpeted as the “biggest update” since Firefox 1.0 in 2004. Quantum boasted major speed improvements, a redesigned UI (user interface) and a switch to a new add-on framework that necessitated rewrites of all legacy extensions.

In the four months since Quantum’s debut, Firefox has shed 1.1 percentage points, which represented more than a tenth of its end-of-November user share. Only in one of those four months did Firefox add share, and then only a tenth of a percentage point.

If Mozilla cannot stem that user-share bleeding, its financial future may be at risk; in 2016, the most recent year for which figures are available, royalties from Mozilla’s search deals — to make search engine Z or Y the default of the browser — accounted for a whopping 91% of its total income. If the browser continues to shed users, search firms such as Google, the current default for the browser in many regions, will have less reason to pay for the privilege.

(On the bright side, Mozilla had nearly $400 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments at the end of 2016, or enough to run the organization for more than a year at the then-current spending levels.)

Firefox’s immediate future may be rough: If the trend of the last four months continues, the browser will drop under the 10% bar sometime in May, and under 9% in August. That’s not certain of course — Firefox has clawed out of user share holes before, if only temporarily — but the overall trend has been downward.

Apple’s Safari also lost substantial user share last month, casting aside four-tenths of a percentage point to end March with 3.9%. The decline was the first for the year.

But Apple has suffered, like its operating system rival Microsoft, from “Chrome Disease.” Safari has, just as has Internet Explorer, lost its once-majority position on its native OS, ceding share to Google’s Chrome browser.

Where once Safari was the browser of choice for as much as two-thirds of those running OS X (the former name for what Apple now calls “macOS”), since late last year, Safari has slipped below the 50% mark on Apple machines. During March, for example, Safari was the primary browser on 46% of all Macs.

The obvious beneficiary of Safari’s decline? Chrome. While it’s impossible to prove that’s the case with Net Applications’ public data, the increase in Chrome’s user share over the last two years — it was the only browser to continuously grow share during that period — points to it, not to the other cross-platform choice, Firefox.

The remaining major browsers — Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge, and Google’s Chrome — gained share last month.

Microsoft’s IE and Edge combined to post a user share of 17.9%, a month-over-month increase of about half a percentage point. That was the third boost to IE+Edge since Net Applications markedly downgraded their numbers in November when it scrubbed bot traffic from its data. But as Computerworld pointed out a month ago, Microsoft will soon face an Edge-only world that may have a huge impact on its position in the browser battle.

Already labeled a legacy browser for Windows 10, where it’s relegated to rendering stagnant enterprise intranet pages and can’t-be-or-won’t-be upgraded apps, IE will fall off Windows 7’s support when that OS gets its walking papers in January 2020. Users will still be able to run IE on Windows 10, but that’s likely to be an increasingly smaller number as corporations revamp their online sites and apps to accommodate more modern browsers.

There’s little evidence that that modern browser will be Edge: Microsoft’s newest ran on just 13.2% of all Windows 10 personal computers last month, according to Net Applications. Although the number was one-and-a-half percentage points higher than February’s, the truth is that Edge has been on a decline since its introduction, when it was the first choice of nearly 40% of all Windows 10 users.

When Edge becomes Microsoft’s sole browser, more or less, there is a very good chance that the Redmond, Wash., developer will account for a share in the single digits. Even if Windows 10’s PC penetration doubled, Edge would, by March’s figure, be the browser on fewer than 9% of the world’s personal computers.

Chrome also accumulated more user share last month, gaining three-tenths of a percentage point to rack up a record 60.9%. At its 12-month growth trend, Chrome should crack 62% by September and 63% by early 2019.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to visit its clients’ websites. It then tallies the various browsers, accounting for the size of each country’s online population to better estimate share in regions where it lacks large numbers of analytics customers.

Top browsers, February 2018

Microsoft is less than two years away from becoming a browser afterthought, according to the newest data from analytics vendor Net Applications.

Data published Thursday by the California-based company showed that the user share of Internet Explorer (IE) stood at 13.5% for February. That was an impressive 1.7 percentage point increase from the month prior and the highest, by far, since Net Applications revamped its tallies by eliminating bot-made traffic from the data.

Even that increase was but a temporary reprieve from a depressing-to-Microsoft trend that has seen the browser shed an enormous amount of user share in the past several years. As recently as June 2015, before Microsoft launched Windows 10 and thus that OS’s native browser, Edge, IE accounted for 54% of the world’s browsers, and nearly 60% of those that ran on a Windows-powered personal computer.

Last month, IE’s user share among all Windows-based PCs stood at 15.4%, meaning that fewer than one in every six Windows machines relied on IE to access the Internet.

Even worse for Microsoft, IE is on borrowed time. Already designated as a legacy browser in Windows 10, where it’s been relegated by enterprises to rendering stagnant internal websites and can’t-or-won’t-be upgraded web apps, IE will be dropped from support on Windows 7 when that OS gets its retirement papers in January 2020. Users will still be able to run IE — and Windows 7 for that matter — after that month, but they will assume significant risk because neither the browser or the operating system will receive security updates.

Because IE accounted for more than three-fourths of the combined user share of both Microsoft browsers, and what with Edge’s tenuous foothold on Windows 10, Microsoft faces a dramatic decline in its total user share when IE is put to pasture.

(Last month, Edge accounted for the browser of record on a record-low percentage of all Windows 10 machines — just 11.7% — which represented a nearly-two-percentage-point decline from the month before. In other words, Edge is a flop.)

By the time Microsoft retires Windows 7, and for effective purposes, IE as well, Windows 10 should have reached a user share (of all Windows) of around 63.6%, assuming its climb continues on the past year’s trend line. If Edge hasn’t, well, edged up as a share of all Windows 10 by that time — and all evidence is that it will not — then Microsoft’s active browser share will be in the single digits, perhaps as low as 6%.

(By “active,” Computerworld means still-supported browsers; there will undoubtedly be users who continue to run IE after Windows 7’s retirement, sans security patches. And IE on Windows 8.1 will be a negligible contribution to user share, as that OS will have faded to under 5% by January 2020.)

As a comparison, Edge’s predicted 6% in 2020 would be only slightly more than half the share that Mozilla’s Firefox — another browser that has been, and is once again, on the ropes — now holds.

Other browsers’ February results were mixed. Google’s Chrome, while still the big dog, shed eight-tenths of a percentage point last month, falling to 60.6% and upending Computerworld‘s forecast that the browser would soon top the two-thirds mark. Firefox ran to stay in place, ending February with a user share of 10.9%, while Apple’s Safari, always a single-digit browser on the desktop, picked up a tenth of a percentage point to reach 4.3%.

Apple, like Microsoft, has seen its primary browser lose share on its home turf. In February, approximately 44% of all Macs ran Safari as the main browser, down from a dominant 66% less than three years ago. Chrome has probably claimed the bulk of the Safari deserters, just as it has absorbed those Windows users who abandoned IE in the same period.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the browser agent strings of the applications people use to visit its clients’ websites. It then tallies the various browsers, accounting for the size of each country’s online population to better estimate share in regions where it lacks large numbers of analytics customers.

Top browsers, January 2018

Browsers built by Microsoft and Mozilla jettisoned some of their precious user share in January, while Google’s broke out of a months-long malaise by grabbing what its rivals lost, and then some.

According to California-based analytics vendor Net Applications, the user share of Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge — the estimated portion of all personal computer owners who ran those browsers — fell by half a percentage point to 16.5% in January.

After a one-month reprieve from losses — IE+Edge had climbed in December — Microsoft’s browsers returned to their long-time pattern of decline. The 16.5% mark was the second-lowest for Microsoft’s combined user share in the decade that Computerworld has recorded Net Applications’ numbers.

Together, the two browsers ran on about 19% of all Windows PCs, or on slightly less than one in five systems. That was the lowest-ever share of Windows PCs for the pair and stood in stark contrast to the 52% they accounted for just two years ago.

January 2016 was a red-letter month for IE because it was then that Microsoft stopped serving security updates to most editions of its kingpin browser, forcing customers to upgrade in most instances to IE11. Many instead switched browsers. It was Microsoft’s decision to retire non-IE11 editions that fueled the rise of Google’s Chrome.

And Edge, the default browser for Windows 10, has not taken up IE’s slack by any measure. Edge’s own user share — less than 5% — meant that the browser ran on fewer than 14% of all Windows 10 machines in January, or less than one in every seven devices powered by the OS.

If IE’s collapse has been Microsoft’s biggest browser defeat, then the inability of Edge to capture more than a piddling part of the Windows 10 audience has been the company’s second-largest failure. Simply put, Windows 10 users have rejected Edge.

Meanwhile, Mozilla’s Firefox shed two-tenths of a percentage point, ending the month at 10.85%, that browser’s lowest share since September 2016. The November overhaul, on which Mozilla has pinned great hope, has yet to boost the browser’s user share, even though reviews of what the company calls “Firefox Quantum” have generally been upbeat.

Because browser user share is a classic zero-sum exercise — if one browser loses part of the available 100%, one or more others must gain — it was no surprise that Chrome picked up eight-tenths of a percentage point in January, the largest increase since the same month of 2017. Chrome accounted for 61.4% of last month’s user share, according to Net Applications.

Chrome has been the biggest recipient, by far, of the dual decline of Microsoft’s IE and Mozilla’s Firefox. Google’s browser is within striking distance of accounting for two-thirds of the world’s user share, a mark it could reach by November based on trends over the last quarter.

The same trend line now forecasts that IE+Edge, as well as Firefox, will head in the other direction. Computerworld calculated that IE+Edge could slip below the 10% bar as soon as August, while Firefox will beat it there, with a shot at dropping under 10% in March.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the browser agent strings of those who visit its clients’ websites. It then tallies the various browsers, accounting for the size of each country’s online population to better estimate share in regions where it lacks large numbers of analytics customers.

Other data sources painted a picture that resembles Net Applications’.

Irish metrics company StatCounter pegged IE+Edge’s January decline at a half percentage point to 11.4%, and a Firefox slide of four-tenths of a point, to 11.9%. Chrome, on the other hand, added 1.3 percentage points to its usage share — a different measurement than Net Applications’ user share, and akin to activity — ending January with a remarkable 66%.

IDG

Top browsers, December 2017

Microsoft’s browsers in December recouped some of the user share they’d sloughed off in November when an analytics vendor changed how it portrays the battle for online hearts and minds.

According to Net Applications of Aliso Viejo, Calif., the user share of Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge — an estimate of the fraction of the world’s personal computer owners who ran those browsers — bumped up seven-tenths of a percentage point to end 2017 at 17%.

Although the uptick recovered only a fifth of the massive loss from the month prior, when Net Applications scrubbed fraudulent bots from its data, Microsoft was likely pleased with even that small bit of good news about its browsers. IE and Edge, the former in particular, have been on an extended slide for several years.

The bot-free traffic of Net Applications pegged the total of 2017’s IE+Edge downturn at just 1.3%, a loss of only three-tenths of a point. December’s boost was a big reason for the relatively small decline during last year.

Microsoft, of course, will take anything it can get at this point, having handed its browser crown — worn since the 1990s when it unseated Netscape Navigator — to Google’s Chrome. By other measurements, notably the data acquired by Irish metrics firm StatCounter that was used to generate browser usage share, IE+Edge was already in third place, at 11.9% behind Mozilla’s Firefox and its 12.2%. (StatCounter’s usage share reflects activity, since it tallies page views, meaning that ultra-energetic users may skew results.)

In Net Applications’ numbers, Firefox remained the third-place browser, with a 11% user share, down four-tenths of a percentage point from November.

Firefox, whose maker recently overhauled the browser, also took it on the chin when Net Applications scratched out bot traffic. In the new, cleansed data, Firefox’s user share dropped 3.5 points in 2017, representing a 24% decline. That was the largest decrease among the world’s top browsers.

Chrome led the pack in December with a user share of 60.6%, virtually the same as in November, while Apple’s Safari climbed two-tenths of a percentage point to 4%.

IE+Edge’s improving number also affected another important data point: The percentage of Windows 10 users who rely on Edge ticked up slightly in December to 14%, an eight-tenths of a point increase. The gain put Edge’s share on all Windows 10 PCs at the highest mark since July 2017. Add IE, and Microsoft’s browsers ran on a combined 19.1% of all Windows PCs in December, also an increase from the month before.

But under the best circumstances, it will take months for IE+Edge to establish a clear trend of growth. Of course, the Net Applications numbers for December may have been just a fluke, a blip on the data radar. Microsoft’s browsers have seemed to stabilize after extended periods of decline in the past, for instance, only to resume their slide toward obscurity.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the browser agent strings of those who visit its clients’ websites. It then tallies the various browsers, accounting for the size of each country’s online population to better estimate share in regions where it lacks large numbers of analytics customers.

IDG/Data: Net Applications

Top browsers, November 2017

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge browsers tumbled last month in user share as the once-universal programs ran on just one in every six personal computers worldwide.

According to U.S. analytics vendor Net Applications, the user share of IE and Edge — an estimate of the world’s personal computer owners who ran that browser — plummeted by 3.3 percentage points to end November at 16.3%. The decline was the largest ever for Microsoft’s browsers.

Mozilla’s Firefox also stumbled badly last month, losing nearly 2 of its hard-won percentage points, slipping to 11.4%, its lowest user share since October 2016.

These numbers, and more importantly the fact that IE+Edge’s and Firefox’s numbers sank to such a degree, is striking. But it was as much a data reset by Net Applications as proof of massive user desertions.

As it has periodically, Net Applications has reworked how it tracks browsers, operating systems and other metrics of interest to online businesses. In a message appended to a refreshed analytics display, Net Applications explained that it had rewritten its “entire collection and aggregation infrastructure to address” out-of-whack data.

The culprit? Bots, said Net Applications. These software-based tools often are deployed by criminals, who program their automated scripts to mimic human online behavior, perhaps in an attempt to cash in on an ad click fraud scam.

“Bots can cause significant skewing of data,” admitted Net Applications. “We have seen situations where traffic from certain large countries is almost completely bot traffic. In other countries, ad fraudsters generate traffic that spoofs certain technologies in order to generate high-value clicks. Or, they heavily favor a particular browser or platform.”

While some may want to blame the large shifts in browser user share on Net Applications’ scouring its data of bot traffic, that would be the wrong move. “Please note: This dataset is separate from and replaces the legacy data,” the company said, making clear that it had gone back into past data too, not just November’s, and eradicated the numbers it ascribed to bots.

Under the new methodology, for example, IE+Edge in October was 16%, or 3.6 points lower than Net Applications called the pair using the older, bots-plagued data. Using the new-only data, IE+Edge actually edged up (no pun intended) by about two-tenths of a percentage point. Likewise, Firefox was at 11.7% in October under the new scheme, but 13.1% under the old. (Firefox’s drop, then, was about three-tenths of a percentage point during November.)

Assuming that the new methodology cleaned out all or most of the dodgy bot-driven traffic from Net Application’s data, the bottom line is that the numbers now portray IE+Edge, and to a lesser extent, Firefox, in less flattering lights. Microsoft’s browsers have deteriorated to a point unthinkable just two years ago, when they ran on more than half the world’s personal computers. And Firefox’s climb back from a near-death experience in 2016 has not been as impressive as the data once showed.

Also of interest were the new data points for Edge and IE calculated against only Windows personal computers. Because both browsers run only on Windows devices, it has been possible to surmise their share on that platform alone. Of all Windows 10 users, just 13.2%, a record low, ran Edge in November (Edge only runs on Windows 10). As recently as March, Edge’s share of Windows 10 had been around 22%.

IE’s share of 18.4% of all Windows PCs was slightly better than Edge’s, but like its successor, IE’s November mark was an all-time low. At the start of 2016, IE’s Windows-only share was a more respectable 28.5%.

Bottom line: Net Applications’ scrubbed data painted a picture of Windows 10 users shunning Edge, and IE users renouncing the browser in record numbers.

Apple’s Safari also shed user share last month, sliding six-tenths of a percentage point to 3.9%. Meanwhile, the king of the hill, Google’s Chrome, ended November with a user share of 60.6%, up about eight-tenths of a point. It was the first time that Chrome broke the 60% tape in Net Applications’ tracking.

Because browser share is a zero-sum game, the downgrading of Microsoft’s, Mozilla’s and Apple’s browsers meant others experienced growth. In Net Applications’ case, the cleaned-up data and revised website listed a slew of previously-unreported browsers, including several popular outside the U.S. Among those were QQ, the browser created by Tencent, China’s largest web company (with a user share of 1.8%) and Yandex, which belongs to the same-named Russian search firm (0.6%). Others now on Net Applications’ list ranged from Opera (1.4%) to Vivaldi (0.1%).

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the browser agent strings of those who visit its clients’ websites. It then tallies the various browsers, accounting for the size of each country’s online population to better estimate share in regions where it lacks large numbers of analytics customers.

IDG/Data: Net Applications

Top browsers, October 2017

Microsoft’s Edge last month sank to its lowest-ever user share, with less than 16% of Windows 10 users running the browser during October.

According to U.S. analytics vendor Net Applications, the user share of Edge — an estimate of the world’s personal computer owners who ran that browser — fell by six-tenths of a percentage point, ending October at 4.6%. The decline was the largest ever for Edge, and set the browser back to the user share spot it last occupied in April 2016.

More notable was Edge’s usage when calculated as a percentage of Windows 10. (Edge is the default browser for Microsoft’s OS; likewise, Edge only runs on Windows 10.) Of all Windows 10 users, just 15.7%, a record low, ran Edge in October. As recently as March, Edge’s share of Windows 10 had been around 22%.

Edge’s share of Windows 10, which started off at 36% when the operating system debuted, has steadily fallen since then, wrapping up 2015 at 28% and ending 2016 at 22%.

If every Windows 10 user had stuck with Edge, the browser would now have a user share of 29.3%, or more than six times its mark. Instead, the trend line has shown that the more PCs that run Windows 10, the poorer Edge has performed.

Simply put, Edge never caught on among Windows 10 users. And at this point, it may be in an unrecoverable position. It’s hard to envision a strategy that would successfully coax significant numbers to Edge unless Microsoft were willing to take such desperate measures — like barring all other browsers from the OS — that it would invite regulatory intervention.

A user share increase by Internet Explorer (IE) more than compensated for the decline in Edge, with the combined figure for the two edging up by three-tenths of a point to 19.7%. The boost was the first positive move by Microsoft’s browsers since December 2014.

Short-term user share changes are often inscrutable, but the three-tenths of a percentage point increase of IE+Edge could be a partial recovery in data collection sanity after the stunning 1.9-point plummet in September. The next month or two will either confirm that that month’s free-fall was real or contest its accuracy.

Because browser share is a zero-sum game, Microsoft’s uptick meant someone had to face shrinkage. Apple’s Safari took the brunt, falling by 0.7 of a percentage points to 4.4%. Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome added 0.3 of a point and 0.2 of a point, respectively, stretching to 13.1% and 59.8%. For Firefox, the October mark was its highest in three years. Meanwhile, Chrome continued to sneak up on 60% but again failed to top that bar.

At the pace of the last six months, Chrome should pass, albeit barely, 60% by year’s end.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the browser agent strings of those who visit its clients’ websites. It then tallies the various browsers, accounting for the size of each country’s online population to better estimate share in regions where it lacks large numbers of analytics customers.

IDG/Gregg Keizer

Top browsers, September 2017

Microsoft’s browsers suffered another big setback last month, losing so much user share that they fell beneath the 20% bar.

According to U.S. analytics vendor Net Applications, the user share of Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge — an estimate of the world’s personal computer owners who ran those browsers — plummeted by 1.9 percentage points, ending at a combined 19.3%. The downturn was the largest since October 2016.

September’s decline was previewed the previous month, when IE+Edge lost nearly a full percentage point after a five-month stretch when the browsers’ slump had been relatively small.

Most notable was that the browsers’ combined share dropped below 20%, a milestone of sorts, albeit a negative one, in their decline, which began in earnest a year and a half ago. It was then that Microsoft forced Windows users to upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer supported by their version of Windows — which meant IE11 for most users — or run Edge on Windows 10.

Rather than nudging customers to upgrade IE or adopt Edge, the mandate prompted millions to abandon Microsoft’s browsers and choose alternatives, for the most part Google’s Chrome. The decision, which Microsoft described in mid-2014 as necessary for security reasons as well as to ensure compatibility with services like Office 365, turned out to be among the company’s most disastrous. Since the upgrade order went into effect in January 2016, IE has shed nearly two-thirds of its user share, tumbling from 48.6% to last month’s 19.3%.

Just over one in five Windows personal computers — 21% — ran IE or Edge in September. (The difference between the 19.3%, which represented IE+Edge’s user share of all personal computers, and the 21% of just Windows machines, was due to the latter powering 90.6% of all systems, not 100% of them.)

Nor has Edge taken up enough of the slack as IE’s share has plunged. Last month, Edge ran on a record-low 17.7% of Windows 10 personal computers. Edge’s share has diminished since Windows 10’s debut — it accounted for 39% of all Windows 10 in mid-2015 — even as the operating system’s share has grown dramatically.

If every Windows 10 user had stuck with Edge, the OS’s default browser, Edge would have a user share of 29.1%, or more than five times its actual mark. Instead, the more PC owners who run Windows 10, the poorer Edge has performed. To Computerworld, that signals an irredeemable loss for Microsoft; it’s unlikely the firm will be able to coax customers to return Edge to pride of place on Windows 10.

Since browser share is a zero-sum game, Microsoft’s loss meant rivals won. Apple’s Safari climbed by 1.2 percentage points to 5.1%, its highest mark in more than two years, and Mozilla’s Firefox added six-tenths of a percentage point, climbing to 12.9%, the largest share that browser has enjoyed in nearly three years. And Chrome edged up three-tenths of a point to 59.6%, ending a three-month slowdown in growth.

Net Applications estimates user share by sniffing the browser agent strings of those who visit its clients’ websites, then tallying the various browsers and operating systems. It also weights each country’s data by the size of its online population to account for locations, like China, where it lacks large numbers of analytics customers.

IDG / Net Applications

Top browsers, August 2017

Drip. Drip. Drip.

That was the sound Microsoft’s browsers made last month as they leaked user share. Yet again.

According to U.S. analytics vendor Net Applications, the user share of Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge — an estimate of the world’s personal computer owners who ran those browsers — slid by nine-tenths of a percentage point, ending at a combined 22.2%. The August decline was the largest since January.

It can be difficult to accurately spot short-term trends with Net Applications’ data: At times, changes seem more an artifact of the company’s methodology. IE+Edge’s latest plunge may signal a renewal of losses after a five-month slow-down in the desertion rate, or it could be simply a hiccup.

Overall, however, Microsoft’s fortunes remain dark in the browser race. While the share loss in the eight months of 2017 has been just over half that of same period of 2016 — illustrating a slowing of the bleeding — IE+Edge has shed almost a full percentage point each month so far this year. If that reduction rate keeps up, the browsers will vanish before this time in 2019.

That’s very unlikely to happen.

Even so, Microsoft must stare at browser share reports and wonder when the bad news will end. And where IE and Edge will end up as well.

IE, of course, has been pushed aside by Microsoft, which has assigned it legacy status, with a concomitant no-further-development policy. Internet Explorer will live on, in the form of IE11, even after the retirement of Windows 7 in early 2020, but Microsoft has already dug the browser’s grave, if not dropped it in.

Microsoft’s bigger problem is the lack of enthusiasm for Edge, the default browser in Windows 10, the forever OS that may never expire. During August, just 20% of all Windows 10 users ran Edge as their primary browser. Edge’s share has headed downhill since the operating system’s mid-2015 debut — when it accounted for 39% of all Windows 10 — even as the latter’s share has grown leaps and bounds.

The more people run Windows 10, the less they collectively like Edge. That’s not a good sign for the browser’s future.

Because the struggle for share is zero-sum, Microsoft’s loss again meant a win for some rivals. Apple’s Safari climbed by two-tenths of a percentage point to 3.9%, and Mozilla’s Firefox stayed in place, while the generic “Others” category grew by nearly a full point, largely fueled by a big bump in what Net Applications dubbed “Proprietary or Undetectable” browsers.

Google’s Chrome, which has taken in most of the IE+Edge refugees, fell by two-tenths of a percentage point in August, ending at 59.4%, or back at the number it held in May.

Net Applications estimates user share by sniffing the browser agent strings of those who visit its clients’ websites, then tallying the various browsers and operating systems. It also weights each country’s data by the size of its online population to account for areas, such as China, where it lacks large numbers of analytics customers.

IDG/Data: Net Applications

Top browsers, July 2017

Microsoft has to take solace from any source it can as its share of the browser market continues to dribble down the drain.

To wit: Even as Microsoft’s browser share again declined during July, at least it was a smaller contraction than of late, perhaps giving those in Redmond hope that the worst is behind them and at some point the downward lines on their charts will flatten.

According to data from U.S. analytics vendor Net Applications, the user share of Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge — an estimate of the proportion of the world’s personal computer owners that ran those browsers — dipped by three-tenths of a percentage point, ending at a combined 22.2%. July’s loss was the smallest since March, and the second smallest since December 2014.

At times, browser share data is too fickle for illustrating short-range trends, so the five-month slow-down in IE+Edge declines could be an artifact of the metrics company’s methodology. Or it may be the strongest signal yet that Microsoft’s browsers may have a share basement beyond which they won’t sink.

Exhibit A for the latter: For the first seven months of this year, IE+Edge lost four percentage points, representing a 15% reduction from their Jan. 1 state. Compare that to 2016, when in the same length of time, IE+Edge bled nearly 14 percentage points, equal to a decline of 29%, or more than twice as much as 2017.

Microsoft must get its victories, or even less-drastic defeats, where it can.

Not surprisingly, the slowing of Microsoft’s browser share deterioration was tempered by a continuation of a troubling trend for Edge, the default in Windows 10. Last month, just 20% of all Windows 10 users ran Edge as their primary browser, down from 24% a year earlier. Edge’s one-in-five share of Windows 10 is the browser’s lowest ever showing.

Because the share skirmish is zero-sum, Microsoft’s losses translated into rival browser makers’ gains. When the former slides less, competitors’ growth does as well. Most affected was Google’s Chrome, which has been the biggest beneficiary of IE+Edge’s nosedive.

Chrome remained virtually flat last month, increasing its share by just one-tenth of a percentage point to post 59.8% for July. Since the start of the year, Chrome has climbed by three points, representing a 6% growth rate. In the first seven months of 2016, Chrome added nearly 19 points to its share, equal to a hike of 58%.

Mozilla’s Firefox was the winner for July, putting another three-tenths of a percentage point on its share to reach 12.3%, the browser’s highest number in almost three years. Although Firefox currently controls less than half the share it did at its late 2009-early 2010 peak, its recovery from a near-death experience a year ago has been remarkable. In August 2016, Firefox slumped to 7.7% and seemed in danger of vanishing altogether.

Net Applications estimates user share by sniffing the browser agent strings of those who visit its clients’ websites, then tallying the various browsers and operating systems. It also weights each country’s data by the size of its online population to account for areas, such as China, where it lacks large numbers of analytics customers.

IDG/Data: Net Applications

Top browsers, June 2017

Microsoft’s browsers in June 2017 continued their free fall, again shedding a significant amount of user share, an analytics company reported today.

According to data from California-based Net Applications, the user share of Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge — an estimate of the proportion of the world’s personal computer owners who ran those browsers — fell by nearly a full percentage point in May, ending at a combined 23.2%.

May’s decline was the largest since January, and could signal a resumption of the precipitous plunge IE and Edge experienced in 2016, when the browsers lost more than 22 percentage points, almost half their total share at the start of that year, and ceded the top spot to Google’s Chrome.

Microsoft’s problem, as it has been since mid-2015, stemmed from two factors: A persistent decline in the demoted-to-legacy IE, which was expected after the launch of Windows 10, and the inability, to put it mildly, for Edge, 10’s default browser, to make up the difference. The second was certainly not in Microsoft’s projections.

In the last 11 months, IE’s share dropped by 41%, while Edge’s increased by only 11%. On its own, IE has been under the 20% mark since January, and fell to a new low of 17.6% in May. Meanwhile, Edge stayed flat for the fourth month in a row at 5.6%. All of those ingredients cooked up a debacle.

Projections of the IE + Edge combination hint at an even uglier future. IE and Edge could fall under 20% as soon as this month, and likely by no later than December, according to the 12- and three-month trends in the data.

Although Microsoft has aggressively touted Edge, the effort has not yet paid off. Last month, just 21% of all Windows 10 users ran Edge as their primary browser, down from 29% a year earlier. Some analysts, however, expect Edge to turn toward a larger share of Windows 10 once enterprises seriously start migrating corporate PCs to the new OS, and, more importantly, when they divest themselves of the legacy web apps and intranet sites that require workers to run IE alongside a “modern” browser, like Edge.

May’s biggest beneficiary was Chrome, which added four-tenths of a percentage point to its user share, reaching a record 59.4%. Computerworld‘s forecast — again using the trends in Net Applications’ data — puts Chrome over the 60% bar by August at the latest.

Mozilla’s Firefox, which in the first quarter of 2017 lost four-tenths of a percentage point, recouped half of that last month, climbing to 12%, its highest mark since December.

Net Applications estimates user share by sniffing the browser agent strings of those who visit its clients’ websites, then tallying the various browsers and operating systems. It also weights each country’s data by the size of its online population to account for areas, such as China, where it lacks large numbers of analytics customers.

Data: Net Applications/IDG

This story, “Top web browsers 2020: Chrome becomes third browser ever with more than 70%” was originally published by

Computerworld.