While Windows 7 still remains as the world’s top operating system with 46.64%, Windows 8/8.1 has seen a slight increase in its holdings and now occupies 9.3% of the market. For those keeping track, Windows 8/8.1 holds almost four times more market share than Apple’s latest operating system, Max OS X 10.9.

November has been a decent month for Microsoft in terms of market share; the company’s internet browser software, Internet Explorer 11, and latest operating system, Windows 8 /8.1, have both grown in popularity since the previous month of October.

Internet Explorer 11 has seen some growth itself, the browser holds 3.27% of the worldwide browser market share for the Desktop. Just as Windows XP seems to cling on to the OS market share, the highest version of Internet Explorer with the largest market share remains IE8 with 21.74%. Overall, Microsoft’s internet browser still holds the majority of the market with all of its combined versions claiming 58.36%. The closest competitor are Mozilla’s Firefox at 18.54% and Google’s Chrome at 15.44%.

While Microsoft may be inching forward with its Internet Explorer 11 and Windows 8/8.1 market share, the statistics are not where the company wants them. Windows 8 launched over a year ago in October and then was accompanied by the free 8.1 update less than two months ago.

While one may criticize the growth rate of Microsoft’s operating system adoption compared to Apples, it must be made clear that Apple has always made small updates available to users for low prices, while Microsoft chose to deliver large updates for higher prices. The majority of Microsoft users update their Windows operating system at the same time they buy a new PC.

As more users pickup and become comfortable with Windows 8, we will see this change - Microsoft has now switched to the “Apple model” of distributing smaller updates more frequently to their user base.

Are you still in the majority running Windows 7, or are you running Windows 8/8.1?

Source: NetMarketShare