Two months after launch Windows 8 has small and solid start

Operating Systems market share December 2012 (NJN chart from Netmarketshare)

Research firm Netmarketshare shows Windows 8 has 1.7% of all operating system use 2 months after release.

Microsoft told reporters in mid-December that it sold 40,000 licenses of Windows 8. Microsoft has 1.3 billion licences installed of all Windows versions.

Where you are in the computer business is secondary to where your market is going.

With consumers showing an overwhelming preference for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, Microsoft has to be in that space with Windows 8 or lose even more customers to Apple and Google.

Overall market share for Windows is still a dominant 82% of the user market. That’s down 9% from two years ago.

Apple is gaining ground on Microsoft with 12% of the market, largely on the strength of the iPhone and iPad.

Google’s Android operating system is showing on 3% of the users computers. Again, the gains for Google are based on mobile computers.

More and more people are using smart phones and tablets to get on the web.

The statistics from Netmarketshare are controversial. Some analysts have suggested that Microsoft has less than 70% overall market share.

Netmarketshare uses data from 160 million unique visitors each month for 40,000 Web sites if its clients.

According to their user data, Apple has 12% of the operating systems market.

IDC Goldman Sachs found completely different numbers leaving Microsoft with only 20% of the market, Google Android with 42% and Apple with 24%. That and similar charts are promoted on Silicon Valley Insider.

Advertising firm Chitika is widely quoted with numbers showing much higher statistics for mobile users.

Neither Apple, Google nor Microsoft show their actual sales numbers.

“Figures don’t lie but liars can figure” is the American proverb. In university, course material for statistics included the book “How to Lie With Statistics”.

All of these statistics can widely vary since each company looks at different sources. Are the statistics for the world, the United States, the United States and Canada? Do they include sales or people who log in to a limited number of sites?