Usage share of operating systems

The usage share of operating systems is the percentage of the operating systems used in computing devices (approximately market share, also discussed in the article).

There are "three big personal computing platforms", two of which claim over 1.4 billion users, Android and Windows. Another one, Apple's iOS and macOS, combined have over 1 billion users. Historically the desktop, meaning mainframes were dominant, then Macintosh desktops became dominant, then Windows desktops became dominant. Now, the mobile-era is taking over, and the market share by desktop computers (including macOS) is down to 45.22%, as of January 2017.

Different categories of computers use a wide variety of operating systems (OS). Windows gained majority usage share in the 1990s, on desktops (the computer platform then taking over), eventually described as "dominant" (and still has a majority as a "desktop OS") but is not dominant across all platforms (while latest version runs on all platforms). On smartphones, Android is dominant by any metric; its installed base is 1.8 billion, which tops Windows on PCs. No operating system has a clear majority across all platforms or all regions; as judged by web use – a proxy for all use – Android has almost caught up with Windows, when counted across all platforms and regions. Android is the highest ranked OS in most countries of the world (even a few in Europe, such as Poland with majority use); leading to it (with some help from other mobile operating systems such as Apple's) eventually, in late-2016, making the world smartphone-majority. Android alone explains that to a large degree, smartphones alone have majority use, where Android is dominant. Android has over half the usage share across platforms (even with it not used much on desktops) in the two biggest continents (and most populous with 76% combined), Africa and Asia. For brief periods, countries on other continents, such as the United States, have lost desktops-majority share; that has also happened for South America.

Since 2013, devices running Android have been selling more than Windows, iOS and macOS devices combined. That made Android the most popular operating system that runs on smartphones, while iOS is more used on tablets. Most desktop and laptop computers use Microsoft Windows, while virtually all supercomputers (and for over a decade back) use Linux. In the servers category, there is more diversity, with Linux and Windows Server most popular, and much fewer mainframes. 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.

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