• But Apple Mac Fans Remain 'Unimpressed'

BOSTON & DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Windows 7 has had an encouraging start in the US and globally according to web analytics firm, StatCounter. The firm's research arm StatCounter Global Stats reports that Windows 7 weekly share went from 1.75% of the US market pre launch to 2.82% by the end of October. Globally too the news was positive for Microsoft with market share increasing to the same levels.

"Windows 7 has hit the ground running and the underlying trend is positive for Microsoft," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. "The new operating system should be further boosted by December holiday season sales of computers which will have Windows 7 preinstalled."

He added that as expected it looks as if Windows 7 is taking market share from Vista and to a lesser extent XP. "In the US Vista has declined from 35.78% to 34.52% at the end of October. XP has seen a smaller fall from 48.92% to 48.47%."

He added that one factor is clear from the analysis. "Apple Mac fans remain unimpressed by the global launch hype. Mac OS X grew over the same period in the US from 11.29% to 11.87%."

Data is based on an analysis of 4.7 billion page views (1.1 billion from the US) which were collected during the three week period 12^th October to the 1st November 2009 from the StatCounter network of over three million websites.

StatCounter, which provides free website traffic analysis, is one of the largest web analytics firms in the world monitoring in excess of ten billion pageloads per month.

Ends

About StatCounter Global Stats

For individual country analysis go to:

http://gs.statcounter.com/

Further information on our analysis is available at:

http://gs.statcounter.com/faq

About StatCounter

StatCounter, a free online visitor stats tool, was founded in 1999. It offers its members the chance to grow and improve their online businesses by allowing them to monitor the number of hits to their website; the geographical location of visitors; the various pages a visitor views; keywords used to find the site plus other features. For information on this real-time, user-friendly, and free visitor stats tool, please visit www.statcounter.com.

Kerri Crowley, Simpson Financial & Technology PR

T: 011 353 1 260 5300

E: kerri@simpsonftpr.ie

Source: StatCounter

<<Business Wire -- 11/04/2009>>