windows7

Microsoft’s six-year-old Windows 7 operating system experienced a surge in market share in June, surpassing 60 percent of the worldwide desktop OS market for the first time, according to new data from Net Applications.

That’s an increase of nearly 10 percentage points during the past year, and more than 3 percentage points during the past month. Most of the increase came at the expense of Windows XP, which dropped from 14.6 percent market share in May to less than 12 percent market share in June.

The milestone comes in advance of Microsoft’s Windows 10 release, scheduled for the end of July. Microsoft is offering Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users free upgrades to Windows 10 for the first year, so part of the increase could result from people and businesses positioning themselves for future upgrades.

Windows 8.1 also saw a slight increase in usage in June, to more than 13 percent market share.

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