StatCounter: Android now more popular than Windows, worldwide

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Win10 continues to nudge upward, Edge going nowhere. Full report coming in Info World
[See the full post at: StatCounter: Android now more popular than Windows, worldwide]

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Article should read “More Android Devices access websites than Windows” not Android more popular than Windows.

Funny how people misinterpret what the data is actually saying and come up with their own stories.

What about all the Windows devices that don’t necessarily visit websites?

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Karlston

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With all the games that Microsoft is playing this doesn’t surprise me.  If Microsoft isn’t careful it will fall into the same trap as IBM.  IBM failed to see the light when they were number one in computers.  They stood mostly with the mainframe market and only dabbled in  desktops. Then a small upstart company began to develop operating systems for the PC market and IBM suffered the consequences.

I really suggest to Microsoft they start thinking about their customers and stop putting out patches that don’t work and quit trying to push operating systems that fail miserably like Window 8 and 8.1.

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What happened to IBM is inherent to monopolies and will happen to all of them.

They don’t have to compete, become arrogant, lose innovation, fail to develop survival skills, start declining and pushing their customers. It’s classic and no LT monopoly escapes the spiral. The only variable is how much time it takes, depending on circumstances.

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Sorry, but it isn’t a count of devices. It’s a count of pageviews on specific monitored sites.

I could’ve had a long-drawn-out hed “StatCounter measure of monitored web site hits says more hits come from Android machines than Windows.”

I shortened it to “more popular than” – which I believe is an accurate reduction.

Read the article for more, important details.

(I’ve been talking about this distinction for many years. Read my five-year-old article, referenced in InfoWorld, for an example.)

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Same goes for Android devices that do not necessarily visit websites.  It may be a wash.

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Because there are smartphone users who never surf the web on their phones?

On the other hand, it’s not difficult to imagine a PC in a professional office that never starts a web browser.

-Noel

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fp

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Android is not only smartphones… There are laptops (not Chromebooks), tablets, digital displays and even time clocks for employee tracking that never connect to the internet.  I use an old Android tablet as my alarm clock.  My company uses Android time clocks that only connect to company databases.

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Noel Carboni wrote:

… it’s not difficult to imagine a PC in a professional office that never starts a web browser.

With the advent of SAAS, this is becoming fewer and farther between, sadly.

As to smartphone users who don’t surf the web on their devices, several people have been “forced” to replace older cellphones with smartphones, simply due to the lack of available options, who very seldom use the web browser in their phones. To them, the device is primarily a telephony communication device, but they are in the minority.
🙂

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My understanding is that StatCounter is pretty well known for it’s reliability and close value. Where as Microsoft cannot be trusted with it own count. If it is in fact close to accurate about worldwide Android use, I would not dispute it myself. As I am just common people more and more of my acquaintances have talked about or have switched some of their units to android over the pasted 4 months or so. I have two android phones, one android laptop, one windows 8.1 laptop, and my old HP win7 desktop. Just my observation.

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There’s a lot of debate about the numbers, but they all measure something different.

StatCounter – hits on specific monitored sites

NetMarketshare – unique monthly devices hitting on a different set of monitored sites, adjusted to account for geographic underrepresentation

Microsoft – monthly active devices

All very different.

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Elly

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I put emphasis on the trends rather than the absolute numbers. The various usage reports are showing declining Windows usage on the web with increasing mobile OS usage. The are also showing W10 usage is flat. These trends are troubling for MS as they point to major change in user behavior and underlying attitudes. As users get more comfortable using other OSes for surfing and light duty work the more likely they are to stray from Windows.

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AlexEiffel, AlanH

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In my native country there is a saying “Falling from the lake into the fountain”. The problem with MS/Windows is precisely that the alternative is Google/Android. Yuckh. Much worse.

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Not much of a fan of Android but no doubt its winning in mobile and mobile is used more that desktops OS as far as hits registered. Which is more what the stats say.  As for Edge well it was DOA when it was released and written off by most even though a few die hard Windows fans and probably IE lovers still try and make it work. I admit trying Edge over the course of updates to see if its better. Other than a handful of extensions and some tweaking, Chrome still feels faster. Actually my tests on two PC’s with Creator final build showed Edge lost some speed and Chrome gained significantly in Octane 2 tests I performed. Sort of sad that Edge has already lost its edge. Pardon the pun but I had to say it.

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Meanwhile IE and Edge have basically flatlined, and Exploder (aka IE, Internet Exploder) is used nearly 2:1 over Edge judging from the charts. Let that sink in for a minute. 😀 Keep in mind that IE is also on Win10, it’s just hidden…but you can still use it. That means that despite everything, including MS’s attempt to bury IE has also been a failure. LMAO

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Why would anybody wanna bother with Edge when there’s so many options out there that do a pretty good job? What’s the incentive? Change for change’s sake, so that MS can snoop more?

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fp wrote:

Why would anybody wanna bother with Edge when there’s so many options out there that do a pretty good job? What’s the incentive? Change for change’s sake, so that MS can snoop more?

It’s kind of touch-screen friendly, as far as I remember. My wife has a Win10 tablet, I don’t use it almost at all, but I recall Edge on the tablet was more pleasant than Chrome on my smartphone. Maybe just a screen size difference.

Antec P7 Silent * Corsair RM550x * ASUS TUF GAMING B560M-PLUS * Intel Core i5-11400F * 4 x 8 GB G.Skill Aegis DDR4 3200 MHz CL16 * Sapphire Radeon 6700 10GB * XPG GAMMIX S70 BLADE 1TB * SanDisk Ultra 3D 1TB * DVD RW Lite-ON iHAS 124 * Windows 10 Pro 22H2 64-bit

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I was one that greeted Edge idea with lots of optimism. The way Microsoft initially talked about it, I was excited. I never used IE, I hated it, and I hated its bad ideas even more (Windows integration in Win 98, activex, vbscript). I know Noel tunes it fine and that is great, but I liked Netscape better than IE out of the box, then Firefox, and never felt the need to use IE.

However, when Microsoft announced Edge, it was at the time when I thought Microsoft was really going to become better than before on what was to me their weaknesses. I thought they understood what they needed to do:

1) stop the proprietary nonsense to embrace open standards

2) focus on security first, no plugins, BHOs, toolbars nightmares, they saw the writing on the wall for Java, Flash, Reader and all that cr*p, after Apple showed them the way by giving the world one of their greatest service which was making an ultra popular device that doesn’t run flash and be stubborn enough to end up killing Flash, knowing html5 could replace it with a bit of incentive.

3) focus on speed second and just get out of the way, it’s about the web page, not the browser, support the web page

4) get rid of the bloat and compatibility craziness between each versions that makes you have to activate all kind of options to be able to use some site properly that only supports a certain version of IE, degrease and simplify the product so you have one version that works everywhere and no legacy to carry. Would anyone downgrade to Firefox 3 today or activate a Firefox 3 compatibility layer? No. Why would someone do that? Same idea. If you allow developers to do stupid things that will become obsolete, you can be sure some of them will. Just don’t allow it.

In theory, Edge could have been an answer to the market that Chrome targets where people have issues with the privacy aspect. It could have been a better answer to Firefox’s security because Mozilla don’t have it in their guts as much as Google or maybe even the  new Microsoft I perceived.

The problem with all that nice idea is once I found out that Edge was going to track what you do without any clear and unequivocal way to completely disable that if you don’t feel like that, it became just a me-too to Google Chrome, and a worse one. I trust Google more than Microsoft for security and even for my privacy, and I still don’t use Chrome, so you can imagine where Edge is far down the list.

Plus, MS having broken trust like they did by showing how unprofessional they now can be, I have no intention to use Edge even if Microsoft changed course, because I would worry they do that only to kill the other browsers and then change their mind later when Firefox or the other more privacy oriented alternatives are dead.

So, no thank you, Edge, may you rot in Windows cell with your pretty Cortana.

The question that remains for me is why normal folks who don’t care about privacy don’t use Edge. It is there, in your face, it looks like IE’s icon, what’s the problem? Is is not rendering all pages properly? If it is just that, it is only a matter of time before it gets more market share. Once installing Google Chrome offers no benefit to normal users if it happens, I don’t see why Edge won’t get more market share. In businesses, IE might have a legacy that is harder to get rid of, so then it will have to stay for a while.

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Noel Carboni, Elly

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I wonder what all those Vista (Longhorn) users are going to do when support ends on April 11. It is estimated that there are approximately 25 million or so active licenses (depending on whose crystal ball you are peering into). We so often talk about XP users as being the ultimate curmudgeons, but they get a pass because XP was considered the best OS that MS ever produced. Vista has been vilified and considered an embarrassment. However, for all the noise, it did eventually turn into a solid OS.

Vista users were not offered a free upgrade to W7 when it was prematurely announced, which many Vista users felt they deserved. They were not offered the free upgrade to W10 either. Rejection was once again their fate. There is definitely some residual resentment festering over this.

I expect a good number of them are business folks – Vista Business 32 licenses were very popular with small businesses that did not qualify for Enterprise licenses. W7 never offered this license and neither does W10.

What does MS expect in post Vista – 25 million new W10 users, what else!!! I am not so sure about that. The Android needle won’t move either (obviously). Me thinks the needle will stay stuck exactly where it is for several years to come.

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It’s a possibility that Vista Users were not offered the upgrade to Win10 because, in general, the computers were old enough technology that there would no be drivers for the hardware or that age frame peripherals. The specs may have met the minimum for Win10 but the hardware may not have.

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It was the slight that was the issue. There should not have been a compatibility issue between Vista and W7 and that stuck in their craw.

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I understood that part. That’s why I only mentioned Win10.
I lucked out. I bought a computer with Vista Business a short time before Win7 came out. I got Win7 Pro free on a software guarantee. But that computer would be a dog on Win10.

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I would assume the same will apply here – most users will continue using Vista, without caring much about MS’s doom and gloom’ing. The fact remains, and I’ve said this several times since…XP has not been pwned like MS said it would be. Yes, I realize most businesses don’t use it anymore, but those who do, there haven’t been any widespread XP hacks, XP pwnages, XP botnets, etc. despite MS doom and gloom’ing everyone to believe otherwise. (And if there have been, I haven’t seen them reported anywhere.)

I’d run Vista before XP at this point, but I wouldn’t really be worried much with running either. Run the OS, be behind a NAT/Firewall, have an updated security app (or be mindful of what you click on), and use an updated browser. Last I heard, Chrome wasn’t updated any more for XP, but Firefox was. That’s your main attack vector – the browser. If you harden that enough, and have hardening behind it, I don’t see any reason at this point to believe you’re in any more danger running XP or Vista as opposed to 7, 8, or 10. The weakest point in IT security is still the end user 99% of the time, it doesn’t matter how hardened the OS is when the idiot at the keyboard clicks on things they shouldn’t.

That being said, Vista or XP users would be much, MUCH better off switching to Ubuntu, Mint, or anything off distrowatch.com over continuing to run what they’re running, but obviously, some people are too afraid to switch the whole OS (and the underlying architecture/base) as opposed to continuing to run “what they know” and just dealing with potential issues down the road by being unsupported.

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radosuaf

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This was my experience as well. I used XP up until December of last year and had zero problems with malware or attacks of any kind most of the time and the times I did were totally my fault, but few and far between and in most of those times, I was able to resolve the problem without doing a clean install. I just don’t buy into all this doom and glooming about using outdated OS’s like XP and the only reason I finally moved up to W7 was because I wanted a high powered computer and it was the only other Windows version I was comfortable using. Of course, I had a lot of system services shut off and had protection measures in place otherwise, but no real problems with XP despite using it well beyond it’s support days.

You’re also absolutely right about the end user being the problem most of the time. It’s so easy to install third party software and just quickly click through the install screens in haste and install a bunch of problems along with it. It’s even easy to accidentally get malware or something just browsing through google images if you don’t have some protection measure in place which, though rare, is pretty ridiculous.

Personally, my decision to stay with XP was because it did everything I needed it to do and all the old programs I have gotten so used to using all worked perfectly. Windows 7 was my only option to be sure to keep that going and a couple programs actually run better on 7. My old XP box will probably not be used for XP anymore, but I am real tempted to install Linux Mint Cinnamon on it and start messing around with it. I will one of these days, but for me, it’s not really about sticking with what I know since I’m fairly confident I could learn to use anything. It’s more about sticking with what I know works for me. My strong distrust of Microsoft only guarantees that Windows 7 will be my last Microsoft OS and who knows how long I’ll be using this one. I really love it, though. XP and W7 were/are truly masterpiece OS’s and the best Microsoft has ever made. It’s been all downhill since then.

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Just came across this article about the continuing presence of XP among businesses:

https://betanews.com/2017/04/03/windows-xp-more-popular-windows-xp-business/

Obviously this situation should change over the next couple of years, but there’s no guarantee these businesses will move to Windows 10 in the numbers or at the pace that MS appears desperate to achieve.

 

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Takes too much time for a monopolist to realize it lost the monopoly, way beyond when it’s too late, so they probably think Vista “losers” have no choice but W10.

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Edge has some built-in padding for those numbers, because of the default Bing/Msn endless* page of news and advertisements. (Okay, some of those were news stories worth reading.)

Edge does make a decent PDF reader.

*I tried for ten minutes to see if it would come to an endpoint.

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If “decent PDF reader” is what they base it on, ** help them.

Edited for content. Please respect the Lounge Rules.

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I think that the bottom line here is that people aren’t abandoning Windows for Android, they are abandoning COMPUTERS for mobile.

If you think back about 20 years or so, you had to buy a $2000 computer to get connected online. By dial-up connection.  Or be able to afford a decent laptop, still dial-up, but more expensive.

Fast forward to the past 5 years or so.  You local mobile carrier can hook you up for cheap!

So unless you need a desktop or a laptop because you are bound to the apps, like a content creator, you are now free to roam with a pocket computer!  🙂

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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Noel Carboni, AlanH

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This is usually where I see people saying “The PC is dead” but really what it is, is that PCs are more for productivity now rather than just being general purpose devices. Sure sales have slumped, but so have phone and tablet sales. Why? Because everyone already has one. Also PC hardware sales are up thanks to PC gaming. So no the PC isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and AskWoody still has a purpose.

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That’s the scary part… Microsoft has taken the one OS that supported productivity and turned it into adware/toyware.

-Noel

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I get plenty of productivity done on my Intel NUC PC with Ubuntu Linux 16.04.

I am about to move to a new city, and there I will be using Comcast XFinity with their Cloud DVR services. This requires Windows to access content in the city where I am located now. So at least during the transition period, I am using Windows 10 Pro for my entertainment and other non-productivity activities.

So for me,Windows is not a productivity platform, but a games and entertainment platform. While my productivity platform has long since migrated to Linux.

This is the exact opposite of the traditional paradigm (using Windows as the productivity platform and something else for entertainment and social media), but that’s what Comcast has foisted upon us Linux users.

I would also like to note that Android grows by leaps and bounds as it and the phones which run it become more and more capable of doing basic productivity tasks. Not the way a Chromebook would allow, but closing in.

Soon there will be literally zero difference between Chromebooks and Android tablets and phones. (The two Google OSes are scheduled to merge into one within the next two years.) Dock with a keyboard and mouse to any HDTV (as I can do using my ScreenBeam Mini 2 Continuum Edition dongle) and who needs a PC? (This configuration does not even need DeX. For Android, the dongle uses Android Cast.)

The phone is the CPU. Totally portable and fully customized with user data available locally or in the Cloud. That’s what many younger people are doing anyway.

My phone just upgraded to Nougat from Marshmallow, with no problems. Easiest OS upgrade I have ever witnessed. Almost totally hands-off and broke nothing.  I’m just saying…

-- rc primak

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Noel Carboni, AlanH

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