Usage share of operating systems

Development of desktop OS market shares at German website ComputerBase since 2002

The usage share of operating systems is the percentage market share of the operating systems used in computers. Different categories of computers use a wide variety of operating systems (OS), so the total usage share varies significantly from one category to another.

Android has the largest installed base of all operating systems of any kind (on smartphones it is dominant by any metric), and it is the most popular OS in Asia and Africa, by web usage. Since 2013, devices running it have been selling more than Windows, iOS and OS X devices combined. That makes Android the most popular smartphone operating system, while on tablets, the iPad tablet still makes iOS more used in that category. In certain categories, one family of operating systems dominates, for example, most desktop and laptop computers use Microsoft Windows, while most supercomputers use Linux, although these categories are not similar in their use cases at all. In the servers category, there is more diversity. Data about operating system share is difficult to obtain, since in most categories there are few reliable primary sources or agreed methodologies for its collection.

Worldwide device shipments

Device Shipments, 2015
Android			53%
iOS/OS X			12.28%
Windows			11.7%
Other			23%%
OS Device Shipments, Gartner

According to Gartner, the following is the worldwide device shipments (referring to wholesale) by operating system, which includes smartphones, tablets, laptops and PCs together.

Worldwide Device Shipments by Operating System

Source	Year	Android	iOS/OS X	Windows	Others
Gartner	2015	1.3 billion (53%)	297 million (12.3%)	283 million (11.7%) thereof OS X is 21 million	~550 million (23%)
Gartner	2014	48.61%	11.04%	14.0%	26.34%
Gartner	2013	38.51%	10.12%	13.98%	37.41%
Gartner	2012	22.8%	9.6%	15.62%	51.98%

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 8% decline in PC sales for 2015 (not including cumulative decline in sales over the previous years). Gartner includes Macs (running OS X) in PC sales numbers (but not e.g. iPads and Androids), and they individually had a slight increase in sales in 2015.

On 22 October 2015, Microsoft reported Windows 10 running on 110 million devices of their goal of 1 billion (in 2–3 years from launch). On 28 May 2015, Google announced that there are 1.4 billion Android users and 1 billion Google play users, active in May 2015.

Tablets

In 2015, eMarketer estimated, in the beginning of the year, that the tablet installed base would hit one billion for the first time (with China's use at 328 million, which Google Play doesn't serve or track, and US' 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 operating system El Capitan has been downloaded by 25% of Apple's user base, according to Apple.

— USA Today

This conflicts with statistics from IDC, that says 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 top 5 biggest vendors are the same except for Amazon Fire tablets ranked 3rd worldwide, new on the list, enabled by its not quite tippling of market share to 7.9%, with its Fire OS Android-derivative.

Desktop and laptop computers

Desktop/Laptop operating system browsing statistics
Windows 7			44.56%
Windows 10			17.90%
Windows 8.1			10.30%
OS X (all versions)			9.52%
Windows XP			7.46%
Windows 8			3.38%
Unknown			3.06%
Linux			1.55%
Windows Vista			1.48%
Chrome OS			0.55%
Other			0.24%
Desktop OS market share according to StatCounter for April 2016. In May 2016, OS X (all versions), overtook Windows 8.1, then ranked 3rd (while not if Windows 8.1 and Windows 8 are combined). Android desktops and laptops etc. (low in numbers) are not included in this graph, while it's likely that "Unknown" is explained (at least in part) by Android (probably misclassified as "desktop"), or other free software, e.g. Linux kernel-based OS. At least, all Windows (and OS X presumably) versions are accounted for. "Other" category includes e.g. Win2003, Win98, Win2000, WinCE and WinNT.

There is little openly published information on the usage share 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 basing its estimate on web use. Also, sales may overstate usage. Most computers are sold with a pre-installed operating system (OS); some users replace that OS with a different one due to personal preference, or install another OS alongside it and use both. Conversely, sales underestimate usage by not counting unauthorized copies. For example, in 2009, approximately 80% of software sold in China were due to copyright infringement. 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 illegal.

Web analysis shows significant variation in different parts of the world. For example, in North America usage of Windows XP has dropped to 3.48%, but in Asia it is still at 11.29% (even higher in China, at 25%; and India) while going down, and has been overtaken by Windows 10. Conversely, OS X in North America claims 15.5% whereas in Asia it is only 4%.

According to a Stack Overflow "Developer Survey Results 2016" survey, English-speaking users "Desktop Operating System"-preference for development use is (and "by next year's survey fewer than 50% of developers may be using Windows" that is for 2017):

Year	Microsoft Windows: 52.02%					Apple: 26.2%	Linux kernel based: 21.7%
	10	8/8.1	7	Vista	XP	OS X	Ubuntu	Fedora	Mint	Debian
2016	20.8%	8.4%	22.5%	0.1%	0.4%	26.2%	12.3%	1.4%	1.7%	1.9%

Another source is the video game platform Steam, which has been publishing their monthly "Hardware & Software Survey" since December 2008:

Month	Microsoft Windows	Mac OS	Linux	Other
January 2016	95.39%	3.55%	0.95%
January 2015	95.48%	3.32%	1.09%
January 2014	94.93%	3.47%	0.86%	0.74%

Windows statistics
Month	Windows 2000	XP 32-bit	XP 64-bit	2003 64-bit	Vista 32-bit	Vista 64-bit	7	7 64-bit	8	8 64-bit	8.1	8.1 64-bit	10	10 64-bit
January 2016		2.31%			0.28%	0.14%	7.77%	34.31%	0.16%	1.90%	0.40%	14.03%	1.28%	32.77%
January 2015		3.80%	0.19%		0.63%	1.07%	11.07%	46.37%	0.31%	4.20%	0.64%	26.86%
January 2014		5.96%	0.29%		1.46%	2.84%	12.51%	50.56%	0.55%	10.01%	0.34%	10.41%
January 2013		9.66%	0.39%		2.74%	3.28%	14.18%	55.55%	0.72%	8.04%
January 2012		17.26%	1.21%	0.24%	11.68%	12.92%	9.31%	41.52%
January 2011		23.66%	0.90%	0.28%	13.33%	10.18%	10.99%	35.36%
January 2010	0.10%	42.15%	0.63%	0.57%	19.09%	8.82%	9.03%	19.50%
January 2009	0.26%	65.39%	0.25%	0.76%	24.47%	8.79%

OS X statistics
Month	10.5.8	10.6	10.7	10.8	10.9	10.10	10.11
January 2016			0.07% (10.7.5)	0.06% (10.8.5)	0.33% (10.9.5)	1.16% Breakdown 10.10.2 10.10.3 10.10.4 10.10.5 0.07% 0.11% 0.08% 0.90%	1.82% Breakdown 10.11.0 10.11.1 10.11.2 10.11.3 0.14% 0.32% 1.20% 0.16%
January 2015		0.11% (10.6.8)	0.13% (10.7.5)	0.13% (10.8.5)	0.81% Breakdown 10.9.4 10.9.5 0.11% 0.70%	2.03% Breakdown 10.10.0 10.10.1 10.10.2 0.24% 1.62% 0.17%
January 2014		0.30% (10.6.8)	0.39% (10.7.5)	0.59% Breakdown 10.8.4 10.8.5 0.07% 0.52%	2.19% Breakdown 10.9.0 10.9.1 0.39% 1.80%
January 2013		0.73% (10.6.8)	0.95% Breakdown 10.7.4 10.7.5 0.12% 0.83%	1.88% (10.8.2)
January 2012	0.28%	2.43% (10.6.8)	2.92% (10.7.2)
January 2011	0.46%	4.72% Breakdown 10.6.3 10.6.4 10.6.5 10.6.6 0.52% 0.22% 2.40% 1.58%

Linux statistics
Month	Ubuntu	Linux Mint
January 2016	0.42% Breakdown 14.04.3 LTS 64-bit 15.10 64-bit 0.22% 0.20%	0.08% (version 17.3)
January 2015	0.59% Breakdown 14.04.1 LTS 14.04.1 LTS 64-bit 14.10 64-bit 0.06% 0.39% 0.14%	0.14% Breakdown 17 17.1 0.06% 0.08%
January 2014	0.67% Breakdown 12.04.3 LTS 64-bit 12.04.4 LTS 64-bit 13.04 64-bit 13.10 13.10 64-bit 0.11% 0.06% 0.06% 0.07% 0.36%	0.09% (version 16)
January 2013	1.12% Breakdown 12.04.1 LTS 12.04.1 LTS 64-bit 12.10 12.10 64-bit 0.17% 0.33% 0.19% 0.43%

^† These figures are aggregates of the figures reported by Steam. As the statistics reported do not include lesser-used versions, these figures should be viewed as the minimum usage. The versions listed below each percentage show which figures were included.

Web clients

Web clients' OS family statistics
Windows			44.28%
Android (or based on)			31.6%
Apple's iOS			11.38%
Apple's OS X			5.05%
Unknown			3.35%
Linux kernel-based (exl. Android)			0.91%
Other			2.8%
Web clients' OS family market share according to StatCounter for May 2016. The following information on web clients is obtained from the user agent information supplied to web servers by web browsers. "Unknown" is likely Android-derivative operating systems. These figures have a large margin of error for a variety of reasons. For a discussion on the shortcomings see usage share of web browsers.

The most recent data from various sources published during the last twelve months is summarized in the table below. All of these sources monitor a substantial number of web sites; statistics related to one web site only are excluded.

Android currently ranks highest, above Windows 7 and has every weekend since August 2015, but note that Android includes many versions (already summarized by StatCounter, unlike what it does for Windows; done in the graph here for convenience), while Windows 7, is just one version of Microsoft Windows, that is however by far the most popular Windows version. For further discussion, refer to crossover to mobile getting more popular.

Also, since January 2016, iOS is ranked first in Australia, the UK and other European countries, e.g. most Nordic ones, such as Sweden. Note again, that iOS includes many versions, while Windows 10 (that is almost top ranked in Denmark) and Windows 7 are counted individually.

"Unknown" (distinct from "Other") has been on a huge rise in Madagascar for over a year, having market share as far back as 2013, topped Android in November 2015 and has been highest ranked since. "Unknown" is likely to be a variant of Android (rise correlates with Android) and then, in May 2016 its share at 36.28% plus Android's 27.93%, would make for 64.21% market share of Android and variants, that StatCounter doesn't correctly identify yet. "Unknown" is also ranked 3rd in India (distinct from Series 40 and other non-smartphones operating systems).

In China, Android is highest ranked since January 2016; had earlier only been highest ranked on some days, above Windows 7, and every day from 18 September to 20 November 2015 (not only weekends) while since then, those two have alternated often. Still, in the Asian continent as a whole, Android has been ranked first, for a year now, as of March 2016 at 42.25%. 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, and thereby making Africa join Asia as a mobile-majority continent. China is no longer a desktop-majority country, joins India, that actually has a huge mobile-majority, and then just confirms Asia's huge mobile-majority.

Online usage of Unix-like kernel derivatives (Apple systems + Google systems + GNU/Linux) is now higher than Windows online usage. This change occurred in the period January-April 2016, according to W3Counter and StatCounter respectively.

Source	Date	Microsoft Windows: 44.28%							Apple: 16.43%		Linux kernel based: 33.15%			Others
		10	8/8.1	7	Vista	XP	WP&RT	Other	OS X	iOS	Linux	Android	Other
StatCounter Global Stats	May 2016	10.27%	6.68%	22.25%	0.73%	3.44%	0.83%	0.8%	5.05%	11.38%	0.91%	31.6%	0.64%	6.15%
StatCounter Global Stats	Dec 2015	6.67%	8.5%	26.66%	1.0%	4.75%	0.92%	0.2%	5.51%	10.82%	1.03%	27.01%	0.36%	6.57%
Wikimedia	Jun 2015	0.1%	9.79%	25.42%	1.15%	3.88%	1.12%	0.02%	5.25%	30.5%	1.18%	14.91%	0.1%	6.44%
W3Counter	Feb 2015		11.59%	39.28%	2.04%	7.36%			6.28%	11.42%	2.44%	12.62%		6.87%

Note

Tablet computers

Tablet computers, or simply tablets, became a significant OS market share category starting with Apple's iPad. There have been 250 million iPads sold as of January 2015, compared to 174 million Android and 5 million Microsoft Windows-based tablets, with others systems under half a million as of March 2014. In first quarter 2015, smaller Android vendors mostly made up for the huge sales drop of the biggest vendors, Samsung (an Android vendor) and Apple.

Global shipments ("shipments refer to sell-in", that is, wholesale)

Source	Date	Android	iOS	Windows	Others
Strategy Analytics	2015	68%	22%	10%	<0.1%
Gartner	2013	61.9%	36.0%	2.1%	<0.1%
Gartner	2012	45.8%	52.8%	1.0%	0.3%

Global tablet web usage

Source	Date	iOS	Android	Linux	Win. RT	BlackBerry	Others
StatCounter	Jul 2015	65.51%	31.36%	2.57%	0.78%	0.2%	0.16%
StatCounter	Feb 2015	66.47%	29.6%	2.48%	1.16%	0.17%	0.08%
StatCounter	Oct 2014	71.67%	25.62%	2.31%	0.08%	0.19%	0.13%

As of 2016, in South America (and Cuba in North America), Android tablets have gained majority, and in Asia Android is also even to iPad that sank to its lowest 49.05% in October 2015. In Africa, iPad has long lost the battle and elsewhere the iPad has a safe margin.

As of March 2015, Android has made steady gains to becoming the most popular (is already, in some continents) tablet operating system (based on StatCounter's web use as a proxy, but sales numbers would also confirm); that is the trend in many countries (at least counties where the market isn't saturated) having already gained majority in big countries (India at 63.25%, and in Indonesia at 62.22%) and in the African continent with Android at 62.22% (first to gain Android majority in late 2014), with steady gains from 20.98% in August 2012 (Egypt at 62.37%, Zimbabwe at 62.04%), and South America at 51.09% in July 2015. (Peru at 52.96%). Asia is at 46%. In Nepal, Android gained majority lead in November 2014 but lost it down to 41.35% with iOS at 56.51% In Taiwan, as of February 2015, Android is on top with 51.31% after losing and gaining majority twice in 2014 up from 18.35 in August 2012. China is a major exception (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.

Mobile devices

Mobile operating systems that can be found on smartphones (and some on tablets) include Google's Android (including Kindle variant), Apple's iOS, Microsoft's Windows Phone 7/8/8.1/Windows 10 Mobile, BlackBerry's BlackBerry OS, Nokia's Symbian, and Samsung's Bada.

Source	Date	Method	Android (including forks)	iOS	BlackBerry	Symbian/Series 40	Bada	Windows	Others
comScore (US only)	Jan 2015	US subscribers	53.2%	41.3%	1.8%	0.1%	N/A	3.6%	N/A
comScore (US only)	Jan 2014	US subscribers	51.7%	41.6%	3.1%	0.2%	N/A	3.2%	N/A
Gartner	Q2 2013	Units sold in quarter	79.0%	14.2%	2.7%	0.3%	0.4%	3.3%	0.2%
Gartner	Q1 2013	Units sold in quarter	74.4%	18.2%	3.0%	0.6%	0.7%	2.9%	0.3%
International Data Corporation	Q2 2014	Units shipped in quarter	84.7%	11.7%	0.5%	N/A	N/A	2.5%	0.7%
International Data Corporation	Q1 2013	Units shipped in quarter	75.0%	17.3%	2.9%	0.6%	N/A	3.2%	0.0%
StatCounter Global Stats	Mar 2015	Browsing (page view)	61.94%	22.64%	NA%	6.00%	1.26%	2.27%	5.83%
StatCounter Global Stats	Aug 2014	Browsing (page view)	54.87%	23.57%	1.59%	9.73%	0.14%	2.36%	7.73%
StatCounter Global Stats	Feb 2014	Browsing (page view)	47.57%	22.97%	2.62%	14.86%	3.86%	2.22%	2.22%
Wikimedia (includes tablets)	Mar 2013	Browsing (page view)	25.93%	66.53%	2.02%	3.03%	0.42%	1.85%	0.7%
Strategy Analytics	Q3 2014	Units shipped in quarter	81.3%	13.4%	1.0%	N/A	N/A	4.1%	0.2%
Note Table is only showing mobile OS market share – not the overall market share. Wikimedia statistics consider tablets as part of the mobile OS market share.

Crossing over to mobile getting more popular

See also: Usage share of web browsers § Crossover to mobile getting more popular

According to StatCounter's web use statistics, Saturday 28 May 2016, was the day when smartphones ("mobile" at StatCounter, than now counts tablets separately) became a most used platform, ranking first, at 47.27%, above desktops. The next day, desktops slightly outnumbered "mobile" (unless counting tablets with; some analysts count tablets with smartphones or separately while others with desktops – even when most tablets are iPad or Android, not Windows devices).

Since Sunday 27 March 2016, the first day the world dipped to desktop-minority, it has happened almost every week (but since the desktop is stronger on working days, the average for weeks still shows desktop-majority). This day showed "mobile" at 45.01% plus tablets at 5.92%. Recent desktop weekly numbers (while monthly show a downward trend) are relatively stable at 53–54% and "mobile"-only at 40–41%.

According to StatCounter web use statistics (a proxy for overall use), on weekends desktops worldwide lose about 5 percent points, e.g. down to 51.46% on 15 August 2015, with the loss in (relative) web use going to mobile (and also a tiny increase for tablets), mostly because Windows 7, ranked 1st on workdays, declines in web use, with it shifting to Android and lesser degree to iOS. Desktop has also been gradually losing relative market share over time.

Two continents, have already crossed over to mobile-majority (because of Android), based on StatCounters web use statistics. In June 2015, Asia became the first continent where mobile overtook desktop (followed by Africa in August; while Nigeria had mobile majority in October 2011, because of Symbian – that later had 51% share, then Series 40 dominating, followed by Android as dominating operating system) and as far back as October 2014, they had reported this trend on a large scale in a press release: "Mobile usage has already overtaken desktop in several countries including India, South Africa and Saudi Arabia". In India desktop went from majority, in July 2012, down to 32%. In Bangladesh desktop went from majority, in May 2013, down to 17%, with Android alone now accounting for majority web use. Just a handful of African countries are still desktop-majority and many have a large mobile majority including Ethiopia and Kenya, where mobile usage is over 72%.

The popularity of mobile use worldwide, has been driven by the huge popularity increase of Android in Asian countries, where Android is highest ranked operating system in the statistics in virtually every south-east Asian country while it also ranks most popular in almost every African country. A European country, Poland (and Turkey while desktop gained a bare desktop-majority again), has also crossed over, and been desktop-minority since April 2015, because of vastly most popular Android there. South America continent is a little far of losing desktop-majority, but the first country there, Paraguay, has lost it as of March 2015, regained, lost again, and currently desktop is at 43%. Android and mobile browsing in general has also gotten hugely popular in all other continents where desktop has a huge (mostly saturated) desktop base and the trend to mobile is not as clear as a fraction of the total web use.

While some analysts count tablets with desktops (as some of them run Windows), others count them with mobile phones (as the vast majority of tablets run so-called mobile operating systems, such as Android or iOS on the iPad).

In March 2015, for the first time in the US the number of mobile-only adult internet users exceeded the number of desktop-only internet users with 11.6% of the digital population only using mobile compared to 10.6% only using desktop; this also means the majority, 78%, use both desktop and mobile to access the internet. Few smaller countries in North America, such as Haiti (because of Android) have gone mobile majority (mobile went to up to 72.35%, and is at 64.43% in February 2016).

Public servers on the Internet

Servers in a colocation centre

Internet based servers' market share can be measured with statistical surveys of publicly accessible servers, such as web servers, mail servers or DNS servers on the Internet: the operating systems powering such servers are found by inspecting raw response messages. This method gives insight only into market share of operating systems that are publicly accessible on the Internet.

There will be differences in the result depending on how the sample is done and observations weighted. Usually the surveys are not based on a random sample of all IP numbers, domain names, hosts or organisations, but on servers found by some other method. Additionally, many domains and IP numbers may be served by one host and some domains may be served by several hosts or by one host with several IP numbers.

Source	Date	Unix, Unix-like				Microsoft Windows	References
		All	Linux	FreeBSD	Unknown
W3Techs	Feb 2015	67.8%	35.9%	0.95%	30.9%	32.3%
Security Space	Feb 2014	<79.3%	N/A			>20.7%
W3Cook	May 2015	98.3%	96.6%	1.7%	0%	1.7%
Note W3Techs checked the top ten million web servers daily from June 2013, but W3Techs's definition of "website" differs a bit from Alexa's definition; the "top 10 million" websites are actually fewer than 10 million. W3Techs claims that these difference "have no statistical significance". Note W3Cook checks the top one million web servers monthly, taken from the Alexa ranking, using HTTP headers, DNS records, and WHOIS data, among other sources.

Note

Revenue comparisons often include "operating system software, other bundled software" and are not appropriate for usage comparison as the Linux operating system doesn't cost anything (including "other bundled software"), except if optionally using commercial distributions such as Red Hat (in that case, cost of software for all software bundled with hardware has to be known for all operating systems involved, and subtracted). In cases where no-cost Linux is used, such comparisons underestimate Linux server popularity and overestimate other proprietary operating systems such as Windows.

Mainframes

IBM's System z10

The most common operating system for mainframes is IBM's z/OS (according to a 2008 report nearly "95% of Fortune 1000 companies use IBM's Information Management System (IMS) for their critical data management needs").

Linux as guest on mainframes

Operating systems for IBM System z generation hardware include IBM's bundled proprietary z/OS, Linux on System z and as of 7 October 2008, the prototype OpenSolaris for System z.

Gartner reported on 23 December 2008, that Linux on System z was used on approximately 28% of the "customer z base" and that they expected this to increase to over 50% in the following five years.

Of Linux on System z, Red Hat and Novell compete to sell RHEL and SLES respectively.

• Prior to 2006, Novell claimed a market share of 85% or more.
• Red Hat has since claimed 18.4% in 2007 and 37% in 2008.
• Gartner reported at the end of 2008 that Novell had an 80% share of mainframe Linux.

Supercomputers

Supercomputer OS family - 1993-2016 systems share according to TOP500

The TOP500 project lists and ranks the 500 fastest supercomputers for which benchmark results are submitted. It publishes the collected data twice a year.

Source	Date	Method	Linux	Unix	Mixed	Microsoft Windows	BSD based (incl. in Unix)	References
TOP500	Nov 2015	Systems share	98.8%	1.2%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
TOP500	Nov 2015	Performance share	99.09%	0.91%	0.00%	0.00%	0.0%
TOP500	Nov 2014	Systems share	97.0%	2.6%	0.2%	0.2%	0.0%
TOP500	Nov 2014	Performance share	98.23%	1.67%	0.06%	0.06%	0.0%
TOP500	Nov 2013	Systems share	96.4%	2.4%	0.8%	0.4%	0.2%
TOP500	Nov 2013	Performance share	98.0%	1.4%	0.47%	0.13%	0.05%

Market share by category

Category	Source	Date	Linux	Unix and Unix-like	Windows	In-house	Other
Desktop, laptop, netbook (excluding Android)	Net Applications	April 2016	1.65% (Ubuntu, etc.)	9.57% (OS X)	88.77% (10, 8.1, 7, Vista, XP and older)
Smartphone, tablet, handheld game console, smart TV, Wearable computer	StatCounter Global Stats	May 2016	64.89% (Android)	23.56% (iOS)	1.7% (WP, RT)		9.86%
Server (web)	W3Techs	Sep 2014	36.72% (Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, RHEL, Gentoo)	30.18% (AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Solaris, OS X Server)	33.10% (W2K3, W2K8, W2K12)
Supercomputer	TOP500	Nov 2015	98.8% (Custom)	1.2%
Mainframe	Gartner	Dec 2008	28% (SLES, RHEL)	72% (z/OS) UNIX System Services
Gaming console (excluding Android)	StatCounter Global Stats	May 2016	0% (Steam Machine)	68.96% (PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3)	23.91% (Xbox One, Xbox 360)	7.12% (Wii U, Wii)
Embedded	UBM Electronics	Mar 2012	29.44% (Android, Other)	4.29% (QNX)	11.65% (WCE 7)	13.5%	41.1%

Note

Embedded and real time segments are vast categories with subcategories including automotive, avionics, health, medical equipment, consumer electronics, intelligent homes, telecommunications. The aggregated information above may be very different for each subcategory taken separately.

Gaming console numbers above only show Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo (and no "Other" category), and are inferred to include all the versions of those consoles. These may be the only ones tracked, and even then the numbers might be rather meaningless for predicting use of consoles for gaming, as StatCounter only tracks web use, and it may not be a good proxy for it.

See also

• Comparison of operating systems
• List of operating systems
• Timeline of operating systems
• Usage share of BitTorrent clients
• Usage share of instant messaging clients
• Usage share of web browsers