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Usage share of operating systems
Relative market adoption of operating systems From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The usage share of an operating system is the percentage of computers running that operating system (OS). These statistics are estimates as wide scale OS usage data is difficult to obtain and measure. Reliable primary sources are limited and data collection methodology is not formally agreed. Currently devices connected to the internet allow for web data collection to approximately measure OS usage.
As of March 2025[update], Android, which uses the Linux kernel, is the world's most popular operating system with 46% of the global market, followed by Windows with 25%, iOS with 18%, macOS with 6%, and other operating systems with 5% .[1] This is for all device types excluding embedded devices.
- For smartphones and other mobile devices, Android has 72% market share, and Apple's iOS has 28%.[2]
- For desktop computers and laptops, Microsoft Windows has 71%, followed by Apple's macOS at 16%, unknown operating systems at 8%, desktop Linux at 4%, then Google's ChromeOS at 2%.[3][4]
- For tablets, Apple's iPadOS (a variant of iOS) has 52% share and Android has 48% worldwide.[5]
- For the top 500 most powerful supercomputers, Linux distributions have had 100% of the marketshare since 2017.
- The global server operating system marketshare has Linux leading with a 62.7% marketshare, followed by Windows, Unix and other operating systems.[6]
Linux is also most used for web servers, and the most common Linux distribution is Ubuntu, followed by Debian. Linux has almost caught up with the second-most popular (desktop) OS, macOS, in some regions, such as in South America,[7] and in Asia it's at 6.4% (7% with ChromeOS) vs 9.7% for macOS.[8] In the US, ChromeOS is third at 5.5%, followed by (desktop) Linux at 4.3%, but can arguably be combined into a single number 9.8%.[9][10]
The most numerous type of device with an operating system are embedded systems. Not all embedded systems have operating systems, instead running their application code on the "bare metal"; of those that do have operating systems, a high percentage are standalone or do not have a web browser, which makes their usage share difficult to measure. Some operating systems used in embedded systems are more widely used than some of those mentioned above; for example, modern Intel microprocessors contain an embedded management processor running a version of the Minix operating system.[11]
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Worldwide device shipments
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 | This section needs to be updated. The reason given is: Some statistics have not been updated in nearly a decade.. (November 2024) |
According to Gartner, the following is the worldwide device shipments (referring to wholesale) by operating system, which includes smartphones, tablets, laptops and PCs together.
Shipments (to stores) do not necessarily translate to sales to consumers, therefore suggesting the numbers indicate popularity and/or usage could be misleading. Not only do smartphones sell in higher numbers than PCs, but also a lot more by dollar value, with the gap only projected to widen, to well over double.[19]
On 27 January 2016, Paul Thurrott summarized the operating system market, the day after Apple announced "one billion devices":
Apple's "active installed base" is now one billion devices. [..] Granted, some of those Apple devices were probably sold into the marketplace years ago. But that 1 billion figure can and should be compared to the numbers Microsoft touts for Windows 10 (200 million, most recently) or Windows more generally (1.5 billion active users, a number that hasn’t moved, magically, in years), and that Google touts for Android (over 1.4 billion, as of September). My understanding of iOS is that the user base was previously thought to be around 800 million strong, and when you factor out Macs and other non-iOS Apple devices, that's probably about right. But as you can see, there are three big personal computing platforms.
— Paul Thurrott[20]
PC shipments
For 2015 (and earlier), Gartner reports for "the year, worldwide PC shipments declined for the fourth consecutive year, which started in 2012 with the launch of tablets" with an 8% decline in PC sales for 2015 (not including cumulative decline in sales over the previous years).[21]
Microsoft backed away from their goal of one billion Windows 10 devices in three years (or "by the middle of 2018")[22] and reported on 26 September 2016 that Windows 10 was running on over 400 million devices,[23] and in March 2019 on more than 800 million.[24]
In May 2020, Gartner predicted further decline in all market segments for 2020 due to COVID-19, predicting a decline of 13.6% for all devices. while the "Work from Home Trend Saved PC Market from Collapse", with only a decline of 10.5% predicted for PCs. However, in the end, according to Gartner, PC shipments grew 10.7% in the fourth quarter of 2020 and reached 275 million units in 2020, a 4.8% increase from 2019 and the highest growth in ten years." Apple in 4th place for PCs had the largest growth in shipments for a company in Q4 of 31.3%, while "the fourth quarter of 2020 was another remarkable period of growth for Chromebooks, with shipments increasing around 200% year over year to reach 11.7 million units. In 2020, Chromebook shipments increased over 80% to total nearly 30 million units, largely due to demand from the North American education market." Chromebooks sold more (30 million) than Apple's Macs worldwide (22.5 million) in pandemic year 2020.[25]
According to the Catalyst group, the year 2021 had record high PC shipments with total shipments of 341 million units (including Chromebooks), 15% higher than 2020 and 27% higher than 2019, while being the largest shipment total since 2012.[26]
According to Gartner, worldwide PC shipments declined by 16.2% in 2022, the largest annual decrease since the mid-1990s, due to geopolitical, economic, and supply chain challenges.[27]
Tablet computers shipments
In 2015, eMarketer estimated at the beginning of the year that the tablet installed base would hit one billion[28] for the first time (with China's use at 328 million, which Google Play doesn't serve or track, and the United States's use second at 156 million). At the end of the year, because of cheap tablets – not counted by all analysts – that goal was met (even excluding cumulative sales of previous years) as:
Sales quintupled to an expected 1 billion units worldwide this year, from 216 million units in 2014, according to projections from the Envisioneering Group.
While that number is far higher than the 200-plus million units globally projected by research firms IDC, Gartner and Forrester, Envisioneering analyst Richard Doherty says the rival estimates miss all the cheap Asian knockoff tablets that have been churning off assembly lines.[..]
Forrester says its definition of tablets "is relatively narrow" while IDC says it includes some tablets by Amazon — but not all.[..]
The top tech purchase of the year continued to be the smartphone, with an expected 1.5 billion sold worldwide, according to projections from researcher IDC. Last year saw some 1.2 billion sold.[..]
Computers didn’t fare as well, despite the introduction of Microsoft's latest software upgrade, Windows 10, and the expected but not realized bump it would provide for consumers looking to skip the upgrade and just get a new computer instead.
Some 281 million PCs were expected to be sold, according to IDC, down from 308 million in 2014. Folks tend to be happy with the older computers and keep them for longer, as more of our daily computing activities have moved to the smartphone.[..]
While Windows 10 got good reviews from tech critics, only 11% of the 1-billion-plus Windows user base opted to do the upgrade, according to Microsoft. This suggests Microsoft has a ways to go before the software gets "hit" status. Apple's new operating system El Capitan has been downloaded by 25% of Apple's user base, according to Apple.
This conflicts with statistics from IDC that say the tablet market contracted by 10% in 2015 with only Huawei, ranked fifth, with big gains, more than doubling their share; for fourth quarter 2015, the five biggest vendors were the same except that Amazon Fire tablets ranked third worldwide, new on the list, enabled by its not quite tripling of market share to 7.9%, with its Fire OS Android-derivative.[30]
Gartner excludes some devices from their tablet shipment statistic and includes them in a different category called "premium ultramobiles" with screen sizes of more than 10" inches.[35]
Smartphone shipments
There are more mobile phone owners than toothbrush owners,[36] with mobile phones the fastest growing technology in history.[citation needed] There are a billion more active mobile phones in the world than people (and many more than 10 billion sold so far with less than half still in use), explained by the fact that some people have more than one, such as an extra for work.[37] All the phones have an operating system, but not all of them are smartphones with an OS capable of running modern applications. In 2018, 3.1 billion smartphones and tablets were in use across the world (with tablets, a small fraction of the total, generally running the same operating systems, Android or iOS, the latter being more popular on tablets. In 2019, a variant of iOS called iPadOS built for iPad tablets was released).
On 28 May 2015, Google announced that there were 1.4 billion Android users and 1 billion Google play users active during that month.[38][39] This changed to 2 billion monthly active users in May 2017.[40][41]
By late 2016, Android had been said to be "killing" Apple's iOS market share (i.e. its declining sales of smartphones, not just relatively but also by number of units, when the whole market was increasing).[42] Gartner's press release stated: "Apple continued its downward trend with a decline of 7.7 percent in the second quarter of 2016",[43] which is their decline, based on absolute number of units, that underestimates the relative decline (with the market increasing), along with the misleading "1.7 percent [point]" decline. That point decline means an 11.6% relative decline (from 14.6% down to 12.9%).
Although by units sold Apple was declining in the late 2010s, the company was almost the only vendor making any profit in the smartphone sector from hardware sales alone. In Q3 2016 for example, they captured 103.6% of the market profits.[44]
In May 2019 the biggest smartphone companies (by market share) were Samsung, Huawei and Apple, respectively.[45]
In November 2024, a new competitor to Android and iOS emerged, when sales of the Huawei Mate 70 started with the all-new operating system HarmonyOS NEXT installed[46] on the flagship device. Since 2025 all new Huawei devices have exclusively been sold with the HarmonyOS NEXT operating system, creating a third player on the market for smartphone operating systems.[47][48]
The following table shows worldwide smartphone sales to end users by operating systems, as measured by Gartner, International Data Corporation (IDG) and others:
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Web clients
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| This section needs to be updated. (August 2018) |
Data from various sources published over the 2021/2022 period is summarized in the table below. All of these sources monitor a substantial number of websites, any statistics that relate to only one web site have been excluded.
Android currently ranks highest,[68] above Windows (incl. Xbox console) systems. Windows Phone accounted for 0.51% of the web usage, before it was discontinued.[69]
Considering all personal computers, Microsoft Windows is well below 50% usage share on every continent, and at 30% in the US (24% single-day low) and in many countries lower, e.g. China, and in India at 19% (12% some days) and Windows' lowest share globally was 29% in May 2022 (25% some days), and 29% in the US.[70]
For a short time, iOS was slightly more popular than Windows in the US, but this is no longer the case. Worldwide, Android holds 45.49%, more than Windows at 25.35%, and iOS third at 18.26%.
In Africa, Android is at 66.07%, Windows is 13.46 (and iOS third at 10.24%).[71]
Before iOS became the most popular operating system in any independent country, it was most popular in Guam, an unincorporated territory of the United States, for four consecutive quarters in 2017–18,[72][73] although Android is now the most popular there.[74] iOS has been the highest ranked OS in Jersey (a British Crown dependency in Europe) for years, by a wide margin, and iOS was also highest ranked in Falkland Islands, a British Overseas Territory, for one quarter in 2019, before being overtaken by Android in the following quarter.[75][76] iOS is competitive with Windows in Sweden, where some days it is more used.[77]
The designation of an "Unknown" operating system is strangely high in a few countries such as Madagascar where it was at 32.44% (no longer near as high).[78] This may be due to the fact that StatCounter uses browser detection to get OS statistics, and there the most common browsers are not often used. The version breakdown for browsers in Madagascar shows "Other" at 34.9%,[79] and Opera Mini 4.4 is the most popular known browser at 22.1% (plus e.g. 3.34% for Opera 7.6). However browser statistics without version-breakdown has Opera at 48.11% with the "Other" category very small.[80][clarification needed]
In China, Android became the highest ranked operating system in July 2016 (Windows has occasionally topped it since then, while since April 2016 it or all non-mobile operating systems haven't outranked mobile operating systems, meaning Android plus iOS).[81] In the Asian continent as a whole, Android has been ranked highest since February 2016 and Android alone has the majority share,[82] because of a large majority in all the most populous countries of the continent, up to 84% in Bangladesh, where it has had over 70% share for over four years.[83] Since August 2015, Android is ranked first, at 48.36% in May 2016, in the African continent – when it took a big jump ahead of Windows 7,[84] and thereby Africa joined Asia as a mobile-majority continent. China is no longer a desktop-majority country,[85] joining India, which has a mobile-majority of 71%, confirming Asia's significant mobile-majority.
Online usage of Linux kernel derivatives (Android + ChromeOS + other Linux) exceeds that of Windows. This has been true since some time between January and April 2016, according to W3Counter[86] and StatCounter.[87] However, even before that, the figure for all Unix-like OSes, including those from Apple, was higher than that for Windows.
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Desktop and laptop computers
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Windows is still the dominant desktop OS, but the dominance varies by region and it has gradually lost market share to other desktop operating systems (not just to mobile) with the slide very noticeable in the US, where macOS usage has more than quadrupled from Jan. 2009 to Dec. 2020 to 30.62% (i.e. in Christmas month; and 34.72% in April 2020 in the middle of COVID-19, and iOS was more popular overall that year;[98] globally Windows lost to Android that year,[99] as for the two years prior), with Windows down to 61.136% and ChromeOS at 5.46%, plus traditional Linux at 1.73%.[100] As of March 2025, Windows holds 71.68% of the global desktop OS market share, macOS 15.7%, Linux (excluding ChromeOS) 4.20%, and ChromeOS 1.86%. In the US, as of March 2025, Windows has 54.38%, macOS 28.53%, Linux (excluding ChromeOS) 6.42%, and ChromeOS 8.44%.
There is little openly published information on the device shipments of desktop and laptop computers. Gartner publishes estimates, but the way the estimates are calculated is not openly published. Another source of market share of various operating systems is StatCounter[101] basing its estimate on web use (although this may not be very accurate). Also, sales may overstate usage. Most computers are sold with a pre-installed operating system, with some users replacing that OS with a different one due to personal preference, or installing another OS alongside it and using both. Conversely, sales underestimate usage by not counting unauthorized copies. For example, in 2009, approximately 80% of software sold in China consisted of illegitimate copies.[102] In 2007, the statistics from an automated update of IE7 for registered Windows computers differed with the observed web browser share, leading one writer to estimate that 25–35% of all Windows XP installations were unlicensed.[103]
The usage share of Microsoft's (then latest operating system version) Windows 10 has slowly increased since July/August 2016, reaching around 27.15% (of all Windows versions, not all desktop or all operating systems) in December 2016. It eventually reached 79.79% on 5 October 2021, the same day on which its successor Windows 11 was released. In the United States, usage of Windows XP has dropped to 0.38% (of all Windows versions), and its global average to 0.59%, while in Africa it is still at 2.71%, and in Armenia it is more than 70%, as of 2017.[104]
StatCounter web usage data of desktop or laptop operating systems varies significantly by country. For example, in 2017, macOS usage in North America was at 16.82%[105] (17.52% in the US[106]) whereas in Asia it was only 4.4%.[107] As of July 2023, macOS usage has increased to 30.81% in North America[108] (31.77% in the US)[109] and to 9.64% in Asia.[110]
Since mid-2020, the world uses smartphones more than desktop (including laptop) computers.[111][112][113] For global statistics it's every day of the week. It has also happened for all individual continents[114][115][116] (at least for some weeks, and also for the United States where the smartphone share reached 54.26% in July 2022,[117][118][119][120] and also that high in 2021). The proportions do vary widely by region (more so than by the day), e.g. in Africa the smartphone share is highest at 72%, in Asia at 69% and in South America at 60%, in Europe is 49% while desktop is slightly lower, and in the United States it's at 43% and desktop at 54% (previously at 50%). On some continents, e.g. North America and the US, smartphone use may only go over 50% on weekends, since smartphones usage increases on weekends,[121][122][123][124] while the smartphone share has gone up to 54% for a single day (Thanksgiving), and on average over 50% for full week.[125][126]
- Smartphones (58.01%)
- Desktops/Laptops (39.49%)
- Tablets (2.46%)
- Console (0.06%)
The 2024 Stack Overflow developer survey counts over 65,000 survey responses.[127] However, usage of a particular system as a desktop or as a server was not differentiated in the survey responses. The operating system share among those identifying as professional developers was:[128]
- Windows: 48.01%
- macOS: 30.65%
- Linux: 28.53%
- BSD: 0.50%
Microsoft data on Windows usage
In June 2016, Microsoft claimed Windows 10 had half the market share of all Windows installations in the US and UK, as quoted by BetaNews:
Microsoft's Windows trends page [shows] Windows 10 hit 50 percent in the US (51 percent in the UK, 39 percent globally), while ... Windows 7 was on 38 percent (36 percent in the UK, 46 percent globally). A big reason for the difference in numbers comes down to how they are recorded. ... actual OS usage (based on web Browse), while Microsoft records the number of devices Windows 10 is installed on. ... Microsoft also only records Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, while NetMarketShare includes both XP and Vista.
— BetaNews[129]
Desktop computer games
In recent years, Linux has gained more interest among gamers than ever before, especially thanks to projects like Wine and Proton. Wine allows Windows programs to run on Linux, while Valve's Proton makes many games on Steam directly playable without any additional configuration. The Linux version of Steam and devices such as Steam Deck using Linux-based SteamOS have made Linux more accessible as a gaming platform. The number of Steam games currently available on Linux exceeds the total number of games available on XBOX, Nintendo Switch and PlayStation platforms.[130] In addition, on modern systems, Linux is able to offer comparable or sometimes higher performance than Windows in some games due to its lower system load.[131] These developments have made Linux an alternative to Windows in terms of game playability compared to the past.
The digital video game distribution platform Steam publishes a monthly "Hardware & Software Survey", with the statistics below:
^† These figures, as reported by Steam, do not include SteamOS statistics.[143]
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Mobile devices
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Smartphones OS by usage
By Q1 2018, mobile operating systems on smartphones included Google's dominant Android (and variants) and Apple's iOS which combined had an almost 100% market share.[144]
Smartphone penetration vs. desktop use differs substantially by country. Some countries, like Russia, still have smartphone use as low as 22.35% (as a fraction of all web use),[145] but in most western countries, smartphone use is close to 50% of all web use. This doesn't mean that only half of the population has a smartphone, could mean almost all have, just that other platforms have about equal use. Smartphone usage share in developing countries is much higher – in Bangladesh, for example, Android smartphones had up to 84% and currently 70% share,[83] and in Mali smartphones had over 90% (up to 95%) share for almost two years.[146][147] (A section below has more information on regional trends on the move to smartphones.)
There is a clear correlation between the GDP per capita of a country and that country's respective smartphone OS market share, with users in the richest countries being much more likely to choose Apple's iPhone, with Google's Android being predominant elsewhere.[148][149][150]
Tablet computers OS by usage
| This section needs to be updated. (August 2018) |
 | This section may be in need of reorganization to comply with Wikipedia's layout guidelines. The reason given is: The table "Global Shipments" needs to be moved to the appropriate section about shipments at the beginning of the article. (September 2022) |
Tablet computers, or simply tablets, became a significant OS market share category starting with Apple's iPad. In Q1 2018, iOS had 65.03% market share and Android had 34.58% market share.[161] Windows tablets may not get classified as such by some analysts, and thus barely register; e.g. 2-in-1 PCs may get classified as "desktops", not tablets.
Since 2016, in South America (and Cuba[162] in North America), Android tablets have gained majority,[163] and in Asia in 2017 Android was slightly more popular than the iPad, which was at 49.05% usage share in October 2015.[164][165][166] In Africa, Android tablets are much more popular while elsewhere the iPad has a safe margin.
As of March 2015[update], Android has made steady gains to becoming the most popular tablet operating system:[167] that is the trend in many countries, having already gained the majority in large countries (India at 63.25%,[168] and in Indonesia at 62.22%[169]) and in the African continent with Android at 62.22% (first to gain Android majority in late 2014),[170] with steady gains from 20.98% in August 2012[171] (Egypt at 62.37%,[172] Zimbabwe at 62.04%[172]), and South America at 51.09% in July 2015.[173] (Peru at 52.96%[174]). Asia is at 46%.[175] In Nepal, Android gained majority lead in November 2014 but lost it down to 41.35% with iOS at 56.51%.[176] In Taiwan, as of October 2016, Android after having gained a confident majority, has been on a losing streak.[177] China is a major exception to Android gaining market share in Asia (there Android phablets are much more popular than Android tablets, while similar devices get classified as smartphones) where the iPad/iOS is at 82.84% in March 2015.[178]
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References
Public servers on the Internet
Mainframes
Supercomputers
Market share by category
See also
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